


Mayhem at the Dance

by dreamcatcher (darcangell23), grlnxtdr29



Category: Glee
Genre: Age Difference, Costumes, Death, F/F, F/M, Halloween, M/M, dance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:34:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 34,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27131860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcangell23/pseuds/dreamcatcher, https://archiveofourown.org/users/grlnxtdr29/pseuds/grlnxtdr29
Summary: Be careful who you bully. Sometimes they come back. Who will survive the Mayhem at the Dance
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel, Rachel Berry/Finn Hudson, Santana Lopez/Brittany S. Pierce
Comments: 14
Kudos: 28
Collections: Klaine-tober Halloween Fic Extravaganza





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! So, this is a project we spent a few days working on and it is completed and ready for Halloween! One chapter will be posted everyday so that the final chapter will go up on Halloween!
> 
> I hope you enjoy and don't get too scared! Comments and kudos are always welcome guys!

It was a shame to see McKinley High so empty. So void of presence. So, not McKinley High. But that was to change in a matter of a few short hours. Once the mid-evening had rolled around and a few hundred teens in cheap costumes wandered into the gym to dance the night away. A few of the planners might show up earlier so time was of the essence.

The glass door to the outer office where the principal’s secretary usually sat swung open on quiet hinges, no marks being left behind on the handle as a gloved hand slipped away. The carpet muffled the unexpected visitor’s footsteps.

Principal Figgins, was still seated behind his desk, regardless of the fact that the rest of the staff had gone home. One would have to wonder if the man lived in his office. He never seemed to leave. He even came back as a janitor after Coach Sylvester had overtaken his position. Maybe that was better. He’d never been that great of a principal anyway.

The man’s head rested against the back of his chair and his eyes were closed. The visitor picked up the sound of Halloween music coming from what looked like a jack-o-lantern on the principal’s desk. Gosh, could Figgins get any more cheesy? However, the fact that he seemed to be lost in the sound of the music blaring from the jack-o-radio or whatever it was, would do a just service to helping the visitor approach behind him unnoticed.

The visitor raised a hand to open the second glass door, the flash of a silver blade peeking out from beneath the fingers. Clearly, whomever they were, they didn’t have homework questions on their mind.

Figgins was lolling his head from side to side in time with the spooky music. His eyes were still closed as the figure moved slowly to stand behind the man.

Their free hand reached out and pressed a button on the jack-o-radio, shutting the music off and the principal’s eyes snapped open. He leaned forward and glanced around, but saw no one. It wasn’t until he felt a hand on the top of his head that he turned to look up behind him. His eyes widened in terror, the only reaction he had time to give as the blade came down and swiped across his neck.

There was a short snicker as Figgins raised a hand to his neck in an effort to stave the blood flow. His expression was still one of terror as the choking began and more of the red substance expelled from his mouth. The snicker grew in volume only slightly as Figgins struggled.

It wasn’t until the principal fell atop his desk, all fight lost that the snickering stopped.

“Happy Halloween.”

…

_ Six hours earlier… _

“Out of the way, Homo!” Karofsky growled just before Kurt’s face hit the metal of the locker. The teenager gritted his teeth against the pain in his cheek. Man, what a shitty birthday this was turning out to be. One day. One day they would have what they needed and the charges could be acted on.

His dad had insisted on going to the police when he’d spotted the bruise on Kurt’s back from a previous locker shove, but the officer they’d spoken to had basically told them that without a witness coming forward, they didn’t have enough proof. They said that Karofsky could claim he tripped and bumped into Kurt, or that Kurt was the one who tripped and fell into the lockers. Without a witness to collaborate Kurt’s version of events, it was his word against the other boy’s.

Of course the officer they had spoken to had looked at Kurt as if it was his own fault he’d been picked on, and that he should just man up. Why couldn’t they have been assigned that other cop, the one who had given him a sympathetic smile as he’d passed? Granted, the cop had looked like he was a year or two younger than Kurt, and if it hadn’t been for the badge pinned to his chest, Kurt would have thought him to be some delivery guy or something.

You would think cops would take any case seriously, especially with all the stories of kids committing suicide because they were were bullied so badly. Bullying was assault. It should be seen as serious. But in small town Ohio, it didn’t even seem to be a notch on the radar for the cops. The justice system in Lima and almost anywhere in general was more corrupt than people might have thought.

Kurt finally moved away from his locker, after the bell rang to be in class. The hallways were now empty and though he wanted to express his pride, he knew there was definitely going to be a mark on his cheek so he’d better go do something about it. The less visible marks he had, the less people asked questions. It wasn’t like they tried to do anything anyway.

The hallway was kind of eerie when everyone was in class. Kurt clutched the strap of his messenger bag tighter. He groaned when he reached the boy’s bathroom. The out of order sign was hung on the door.

“Not again!” he ground out. Kurt didn’t mind using the girl’s bathroom, but he’d rather not be in there by himself, should someone come along with a bathroom pass. But he was tired of people stopping up the toilets.

Gritting his teeth, Kurt proceeded to the stairwell, eyes glancing downward. People rarely went down there. The only other boy’s bathroom that wasn’t out of service was down in the basement and it was creepy.

He could of course, go to the locker room, but he was pretty sure Karofsky and his goons had PE that period. So against his better judgment, Kurt had no other choice.

Slowly, one step at a time, the boy made his way down the stairs. They creaked under his feet, worn after little use, surprisingly. There had been a time when McKinley had classes in the basement, but that had all changed after an incident in the late sixties.

…

_ It was 1967, in the height of the hippie era. Lockers were covered with big, bold colored flower stickers and girls stood by them chatting. _

_ The sound of someone’s beads hitting the floor reached the boy’s ears and he turned to see Pam bend down to pick up her bright red beaded necklace. He paused for a moment as he watched her wrap the beads around her wrist like a bracelet instead. She looked so cool. He wondered how the necklace would look on his own wrist. _

_ He stood at the foot of the stairs in the basement corridor, eyes moving automatically to the group of boys near the water fountain, before he forced them down to the floor. _

_ He clutched his binder tighter in his hands and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.  _ Don’t look, _ he muttered under his breath as he made his way down the hallway. _ Don’t let them see what a pervert you are.  _ He felt dirty as  _ Those  _ thoughts filled his head. He tried to keep his eyes cast down to the floor as he walked past, but like a magnet, they were drawn to the dark haired boy, the quarterback of the football team. _

_ “What are you looking at, nerd?” The boy stopped, suddenly feeling his knees start to shake. The jock stood in front of him, staring him down. Hands on his hips. His perfect hair swept up off his forehead. _

_ “I just...I just…” He swallowed and stood to his full height. He was not going to let this boy get to him. Not today.  _

_ “‘I just…’ What? Was staring like a faggot at my ass?” The jock was right in his face now, and the boy couldn’t stop his eyes from dropping to the boy’s mouth, which was almost close enough to kiss. “What are you looking at now? Do my lips look delicious to you?” he continued in a mocking tone. _

_ The boy quickly shook his head off, forcing his eyes to look elsewhere, anywhere but at the jock’s mouth. But no matter what he tried, they kept going right back to the larger boy’s lips. _

_ “I knew it! You want to kiss me, you sick fag!” the jock growled.  _

_ This was one of those moments where the boy could feel like he was higher than the idiot jock. He stood as tall as he dared and with a slight tremble to his voice, said, “Did you know every time you call me a fag, you’re really just calling me a French cigarette? I wasn’t aware you wanted a smoke that badly.” _

_ “What did you say to me, fairy?” the jock snarled, shoving the boy away from him, hard.  _

_ The boy hit the wall across the hallway. The confidence he had mustered up had all but vanished now, as he stared at the dangerous look on the other boy’s face. He saw how his eyes flashed and then he could feel again how all eyes were on him once more. _

_ The jock began advancing on him, causing the boy to continue to step backwards. He stumbled as the jock and his friends backed him through the door frame of the empty boys’ bathroom.  _

_ In the hallway, the other students could clearly hear the sounds of fists meeting flesh. They quickly finished up at their lockers and hurried on to their next class, ignoring the cries of anguish coming from behind the closed door. _

…

Kurt shook his head and blinked. He had barely noticed he was moving with the distraction of the stories that went around the school. So he was surprised when he suddenly found himself in front of the boys’ bathroom.

The door was badly in need of a coat of paint, but who knew how many more years it would go without one. Figgins was always trying to find a way to cheat the budget. There was no need for him to paint a bathroom door no one really used.

The pale boy glanced around him. The basement was deserted, as he’d expected. But it had been left the same way it looked the last time it was ever really used. There were a few yellowing pieces of paper on the floor just a few feet away from him. An old desk sat outside one of the classrooms, probably for punishment purposes. Some of the lockers doors were bent in like something had rammed into them. He doubted it would be easy to open any of them anyway. He could see the rust on the nearest ones.

He shook his head again and returned his eyes to the bathroom door, bracing himself for going inside. He had just raised his palm to push it open when the sound came.

“Go away!”

Kurt jerked his hand back. His eyes darted around. What the hell was that? Or more importantly,  _ who _ the hell was that?

“Hello?” Kurt called out, taking a step back. The sudden presence of the disembodied voice had caused him to all but forget his reasons for being down here in the first place.

“Go away!” the voice shouted again.

Kurt had heard lots of stories, but never had anyone ever mentioned McKinley might be haunted. Although now that he thought about it, it wasn’t too hard to put two and two together. The basement had stopped being used for regular school after the incident in the sixties. It was left unkempt, in a manner that suggested everyone had just up and walked out without looking back. And anytime someone asked about it, the staff would skirt over the issue and continue on with whatever they’d been teaching.

That didn’t keep the students from finding out the truth. There was a yearbook in the alumni section of the library from the time period when the basement had last been used. Kurt couldn’t remember the exact year, but he knew there was a tribute page in the yearbook. One of the students had died that year and the staff had chosen to memorialize him. That was more than Kurt could say for the current staff. He was willing to bet if he died, he wouldn’t be given a second thought by them. Except for maybe when it came to Coach Sylvester and Mr. Schue. Though the former had been much more of a help to him.

“Freddie? Freddie Studebaker?” Kurt asked hesitantly.

It was silent for a moment and then, “Who are you?” the voice suddenly asked. It had lost the threat and was starting to sound a little apprehensive instead.

“My name is Kurt Hummel. I’m a student here at McKinley,” he said, trying to keep his cool. He was aware from the tribute that Freddie hadn’t been a well liked kid at all. He’d been bullied. Just like Kurt was. And judging by the looks of things, the staff back then did no more to help than the staff now did.

“Go away!” the voice said once again.

Kurt drew a breath. “I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to use the bathroom. Is that okay?”

Silence. The pale boy took it as a sign that it was okay and he cautiously opened the bathroom door.

The bathroom was all washed out so to speak. Just like the door, it was in dire need of a paint job and Kurt was willing to bet the toilets badly needed plumbing. He didn’t dare enter any of the stalls and thanked a God he didn’t believe in that he didn’t actually need to use the restroom.

Walking slowly and still being cautious, he approached the mirror. It was dingy and hard to see into it so Kurt grabbed a few paper towels (perhaps the one thing the staff kept up with down here) and wet them under the faucet. He reached up with the wet paper towels and started to wipe down the mirror.

When the glass was clear enough, Kurt let out a yelp and stumbled back a few steps. There was a boy standing behind him in the mirror. The teenager whipped his head around to look over his shoulder but there was no one there. He looked back at the mirror and he could still see the figure behind him.

“You’re hurt.” He heard the words even as he saw the mouth moving in the mirror.

“It’s nothing,” he replied, trying again to keep his cool. The boy in the mirror just stared at him, an expression Kurt was already well acquainted with.

“I know bullying when I see it,” the boy in the mirror said. It took all Kurt had not to let out a sigh. He could lie to everyone else, sure. But he couldn’t lie to someone who knew first hand what he was going through.

He opened and closed his mouth, searching for something to say, but he couldn’t find the words. Instead, he busied himself with attempting to clean up the mark so that at least, no one would tell it was there. And after washing it off, he pulled the concealer out of his shoulder bag.

“This needs to stop. It ends now,” the boy in the mirror suddenly said. Kurt felt his hand freeze on its way up to his cheek. When he glanced back in the mirror, the boy had vanished.

Slowly, Kurt stood back up and glanced around the bathroom. Where had the boy gone? “Hello?” he called out. Silence met his ears. “Hello?” he tried again. Still nothing. “Freddie?” he said, thinking that maybe addressing the boy directly would be more successful.

And then suddenly, without warning, the bathroom went pitch black.


	2. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the first official chapter! For reference, have a list of all the New Directions' costumes for the dance, just in case you miss where they're mentioned. :)
> 
> Kurt - Green Ranger  
> Mercedes - Yellow Ranger  
> Finn - Red Ranger  
> Rachel - Pink Ranger  
> Sam - Blue Ranger  
> Puck - Black Ranger  
> Quinn - Snow Queen  
> Artie - Bat Mobile  
> Tina - Flapper  
> Mike - Charlie Chaplan  
> Santana - Hippie  
> Brittany - Daisy Duke
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome guys!

“I really hope Kurt is here,” Mercedes Jones said as she carried a garment bag and makeup kit up the front steps of the Hudmel house.

Rachel Berry followed her friend up the steps, rolling her eyes. “He had better be. No one’s seen him since fifth period,” she said. “And he better not be backing out of the dance now.”

Mercedes pursed her lips to bite back the rude sort of snappy comment she had for her friend and turned to look at her as Rachel pressed the doorbell. “He promised and Kurt doesn’t break promises,” she said instead. “Besides, we wouldn’t be complete without him.”

As they waited, Rachel’s eyes landed on the makeup kit and something suddenly dawned on her. “Wait a minute. Why did you bring that? Our costumes don’t require makeup,” she said in confusion.

The dark skinned diva rolled her eyes at the girl. “I thought we would shake things up and be dead,” she said. “I mean, regular ones are so cliche.”

Just then, the door opened, revealing Carole Hudson-Hummel with a smile on her face. “Hi girls, Happy Halloween!” she said.

“Hi Mrs. Hudson-Hummel,” Mercedes replied, giving Rachel a look to tell her that they would be finishing this conversation later. “Is Kurt here?”

Carole nodded, though she had a slight concerned look on her face. “He came home from school early and said he wasn’t feeling well. I hope he’s okay to go to your dance tonight,” she said, the concern filtering into her voice as she spoke.

Rachel and Mercedes exchanged glances. Carole’s concerned attitude might have been contagious because both teenagers seemed to have taken on the same feelings as the woman.

“Left school early?” Mercedes questioned with a frown.

Rachel shook her head. “That’s not like Kurt,” she said. Carole gave them both a somewhat defeated look and the girls made their way to the stairs.

“Remind me why we’re going to be Power Rangers again?” Rachel said. Clearly she wasn’t entirely thrilled with the idea, but it was something they were doing for Kurt’s sake. Though she was having a hard time remembering exactly why.

“So Kurt can feel like a hero tonight,” Mercedes replied. Being his two best friends, Rachel and Mercedes could see better than anyone that Kurt was really troubled and with the amount of times they saw Karofsky looming after him in the hallway, there was no question that he needed to feel somewhat like he was on top. Like he had the upper hand. Maybe being a Power Ranger would boost up his confidence and self-esteem. Though when the idea was pitched to the others in the club that were rounding out the team, they wondered why Mercedes and Rachel thought Kurt didn’t have enough of it.

Kurt was incredibly sassy and his bitch face could end you if looks could kill. It was clear that usually, he didn’t let the bullying get to him. Or that was how it appeared to Rachel and Mercedes anyway.

However, none of his friends knew the exact extent the bullying went to and Kurt was very good at masking his true feelings. Even around the people who knew him best, like his father.

As usual, Rachel had no qualms about just barging in and before Mercedes could stop her, she swung the door to Kurt’s room open. “Rachel!” Mercedes hissed as the door swung open and she tried to pull her back. “Don’t you ever knock?”

Rachel shrugged. “Why? What am I going to walk in on?” she asked.

Mercedes gave her a look, choosing not to dignify the question with an answer. But as they both entered Kurt’s room cautiously, there seemed to be no sign of him.

“I thought Carole said he was home,” Mercedes said, confusion lacing her face.

Rachel looked equally confused until the both of them heard the sound of water shutting off in the bathroom and they both relaxed, realizing Kurt must have only been in his ensuite.

A moment later, the door opened and the boy exited his bathroom, wearing the plainest clothes the two girls had ever seen him wear. He was startled by his friends’ presence in the room.

“Kurt?” Rachel questioned, looking him up and down. The boy was wearing a pair of what appeared to be faded jeans and a simple white t-shirt. It was not at all what Kurt would normally wear. Even if he had been settling in for a night at home, he would still be immaculately comfortable.

“What?” Kurt replied, looking slightly on the defensive. “Have you never seen a boy wear clothes before?” he snapped. Both girls jumped and glanced at each other and suddenly Kurt’s face softened. “Sorry,” he said, looking slightly confused. “I don’t know where that came from.” The girls saw him shut his eyes, scrunching his face up and shaking his head, having no idea why he was doing it. Kurt raised one hand and hit the side of his head with it.

“Kurt, are you alright?” Mercedes asked. She proceeded further into the room and set her stuff down on the bed.

The pale boy nodded, and though his friends were unconvinced, they didn’t question it. “I’m fine,” he said. It was then that he noticed the makeup kit Mercedes had brought and pretty much repeated Rachel’s earlier question. “Why did you bring makeup?”

Mercedes rolled her eyes. “I thought it might be more creative if we turned ourselves into dead Power Rangers,” she told him.

Kurt was quiet for a moment. “You know, that kind of works with the green ranger. In the original Japanese version of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, he actually dies at the end of the arch,” he said.

Mercedes and Rachel exchanged glances. Neither of them had known that. Though they were aware Kurt might know more about Power Rangers than they did. He did after all use to plan his Power Rangers’ weddings.

“Well then, I guess dead rangers it is,” Mercedes said triumphantly.

“What about the others?” Rachel asked. Mercedes shrugged.

“Half dead, half alive,” she said nonchalantly.

“Probably a good idea,” Kurt said, standing to get the kit from the bed. “I’m in no mood to try and talk Finn and Puck into wearing any kind of makeup. Though I have a suspicion Sam wouldn’t be hard to persuade.”

…

“This spandex really defines little Puckerman,” Puck stated, staring at himself in Finn’s mirror. He, Finn, and Sam were just down the hall from Kurt and the girls, the other half of the elusive superhero team.

Finn looked up from where he was trying to figure out how to fasten on the helmet and gave Puck an incredulous look. “Really dude? The girls beg us to play Power Rangers to help Kurt and that’s your biggest worry?”

Puck scoffed. “Who said I was worried about it?” he said with a smirk. “If anything the good thing about this costume is it accentuates my best assets.”

From his spot on Finn’s bed, Sam rolled his eyes. “Is that really all you care about?” the blonde asked Puck, raising his own helmet to his head.

The mohawked boy turned from the mirror, grabbing the black helmet from where he’d set it on Finn’s dresser. “Dude, it will be a great distraction for Rita’s monsters. Easy kill man,” he said.

“Not all of Rita’s monsters are female,” Finn pointed out.

Puck shrugged. “Whatever dude. The guys will be distracted too because they’ll be jealous they don’t have a package like mine.”

Silence fell in Finn’s room for a moment before Finn spoke up again. “You’re lucky Kurt isn’t in here to hear you talk like that,” he said.

Again, Puck shrugged. “What’s he going to do about it?” he asked.

Finn and Sam exchanged looks with each other. Sam may have only arrived at McKinley the year earlier, but he’d jumped right on board with being Kurt’s friend so he knew the boy a lot better than most of the other guys in ND, aside from Finn, who was Kurt’s stepbrother.

“Dude,” Finn said after a silent conversation with Sam. “If you really don’t know Kurt’s talent for sassy retorts by now, then where have you been hiding?”

Puck grinned and placed the black helmet on his head, crossing his arms over his chest. “Please, as if any of his remarks could intimidate me.”

“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” Sam said, fastening the blue helmet into place.

“I always wondered how they were able to see out of these things,” Finn deadpanned after his red helmet was in place. Leave it to Finn Hudson to make a remark like that.

…

The parking lot at McKinley was still sparsely populated when Kurt and his girls arrived. They easily spotted Tina, Mike, Artie, and the Unholy Trinity making their way towards them as Finn and the other boys pulled up in Puck’s truck. As the group converged, another pick up pulled in a couple of aisles over, and Dave Karofsky and his football buddies, including Azimio, jumped out. 

Kurt eyed them warily, absently rubbing his temple, where concealer still hid the mark from earlier in the day.

“Are you okay, boo?” Mercedes asked. “You keep rubbing your head.”

“Sorry,” he said flatly. “Tension headache. It’s why I left school early. Probably should have taken some iBuprofen.”

The dark skinned girl in the yellow ranger costume didn’t look like she believed him fully, but let it go, knowing Kurt wouldn’t tell her anything else.

The group made their way into the gym several yards behind the jocks, as Santana cracked jokes about everyone’s costumes.

“I must say, those ranger costumes do put things in perspective. It’s just a shame Kurt and I both bat for the same team. He makes the rest of you guys look ill equipped.”

Puck frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Before Santana could answer, Kurt was already on it. “It means you have a thesaurus, not a Puckasaurus,” he said.

The mohawked boy was confused. “And that means?”

“You’re no Dr. Evil because your mini me is boring,” Kurt went on. At Puck’s still confused look he sighed, knowing that he was going to have to spell it out for him. “You have a boring little fireman,” he said. “It can barely put out a fire.”

Sam and Finn were coughing rather oddly as they tried not to laugh. The rest of the group didn’t bother trying to cover their snorts and giggles.

“Oh, and I suppose you have a hose?” Puck defended.

Kurt smirked, carrying his helmet under his arm, a serious look on his face. “Oh no honey. I’m packing the whole truck.”

Santana smirked and patted Puck on the shoulder. “Next time, don’t bring an inch worm to a yardstick battle.”

Puck looked indignant and stormed off into the gym, and the rest of the group let the laughter fly as they followed.

…

“I don’t see why you thought we should wait until we got to McKinley to get into costume,” one of the football players said as he stood in the boy’s bathroom with the rest of the guys.

Karofsky came out of the stall, wearing a long black hooded robe and carrying a scythe. He walked up to the sinks beneath which he had left a duffle bag and pulled out two jars of paint, one white, one black.

“Because,” the jock replied as he opened the jars and stuck his fingers in. “If that little fairy got a look at us before the dance started, we wouldn’t be able to scare him. No one should see death before it comes.”

His friends were quiet for a moment as they watched him apply the paint to his face, doing his best to turn it into a skull. They were dressed similar but were meant to be death’s minions. Of course, they would never question Karofsky’s ideas, but it was harder to get ready in the school bathroom than at home.

“I can’t wait to see that little lady boy shit his pants with fear,” Azimio chuckled, causing the other guys to bark with laughter as well.

“It’s going to look so glorious on that stupid green and white spandex he’s wearing,” Karofsky confirmed, applying the last of the paint to his face and washing off his hands before stowing the jars back into his duffle bag. He turned to one of his minions. “Take this back out to the truck,” he said, handing the bag off to him. He turned and faced the mirror. “Lady Hummel wants a Happy Halloween, we’ll make sure it’s his last.”

The bathroom filled with laughter at his words.

…

“Yo, rookie! We’re out of coffee!” Carmichael shouted, shaking the coffee can in Blaine’s face. “Make yourself useful! Run down to the Lima Bean and get us some! It’s Halloween, and it’s going to be a long night. Black, three sugars! None of those fru fru drinks!”

Blaine glared at the fifty something, fat detective who was the duty sergeant for the shift. He’d been on the force for a little over five years, first in Westerville, and for the last six months here in Lima. He hadn’t been a rookie for a long time. “Just because I’m younger and in better health than you, doesn’t make me a rookie. And I wouldn’t offer you any drink with whipped cream on it. I don’t want to be responsible for your Myocardial Infarction.”

The older man returned his glare. “You might have been fast tracked to detective thanks to your daddy’s money, but I still out rank you. Show some respect!”

The young man furrowed his brow, feigning confusion. “I’m sorry, Carmichael. I thought this was a police precinct, not the army barracks.” Despite his dislike of the older man, Blaine did want another cup of coffee himself, so stood and grabbed his suit jacket. “And for your information, my father’s wealth had nothing to do with my promotion. He cut me off when he found out I was gay. I earned my job the hard way.”

Before Carmichael could respond, several phones began to ring at once as the usual flurry of Halloween craziness began to trickle in. It was the same every year, no matter which department he was with. It wasn’t unusual for the beat cops to be overwhelmed, and the detectives from various units were called on to help sort out the lunacy. Blaine just shook his head and pulled his keys from his pocket as he left the building, heading for a caffeine fix.

…

Kurt found himself standing by the punchbowl only minutes after he and his friends had entered. It was a little awkward holding the green helmet under his arm while carrying a glass of punch in his free hand. He needed a moment alone. The treats on this table would be the only ones he’d get this year.

Ever since Finn and Carole had moved in, Kurt had made it a point to not celebrate his birthday. Besides, he was just a little put off about the fact that his birthday happened to fall on Halloween. When he was younger, he used to love it. He’d get to go trick-or-treating and then come home and put his candy on his birthday cake. But when the actual bullying started in middle school, it all changed.

Anyone who knew Kurt long enough, would know that he’d been in another school district until the summer between seventh and eighth grade. The kids in his old district were aware that Halloween was his birthday and in middle school, they’d started with the not so friendly jokes about it. He remembered a boy he’d thought was his friend shouting, ‘A black cat must have crossed the hospital’s path the day he was born. That’s why he’s such a freak!’

Kurt’s grip on the glass in his hand tightened. It was comments like that that made him decide he wasn’t going to tell anyone exactly when his birthday was when he changed schools.

Cutting out the festivities when Finn and Carole moved in only meant Finn didn’t find out now that they were family. Maybe it was silly, because Kurt was sure his friends now wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. But his first two years of middle school had scarred him for life when it came to people knowing.

“Hey stranger!” said a voice and Kurt looked up to see Tina had approached the refreshment table, her flapper costume making her look taller than usual. “What are you doing standing over here all by yourself?” she asked.

“Oh you know, just waiting for the dance to really get started,” he lied. It was still early, and there weren’t a lot of students there just yet, but they were starting to trickle in. Honestly, Kurt had no intention of really dancing at all.

Tina frowned and turned to face him. “Kurt, are you sure you're okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” he got out in an aggravated tone and Tina’s eyes went wide. “Sorry,” he muttered, raising a hand to his forehead. “I’m going to go see if the nurse is actually here. Maybe she can give me some medicine for my head.”

The younger girl continued to frown as she watched her friend walk away. Something had changed in the hours since she had last seen him at lunch, something must have drastically changed. Because Tina had never seen Kurt so easily snippy with his friends for no reason. Not even when he actually did have a headache. Furthermore, Kurt wasn’t the type of person to ask to go home due to a headache. In fact, he was the type to stubbornly try to stay at school even if he had a fever. He hated missing any school.

“What is going on with you, Kurt?” she asked herself, wishing she could just take whatever it was away.


	3. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Here is the next chapter! Readers beware!
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome!

“Ten cents on the dollar,” Sandy Ryerson said, shaking a small packet back and forth. The teenager across from him just stared, his pupils already blown out. “Oh come on! If they catch me on school grounds I’ll have to say goodbye to my China doll collection!”

The teenager, better known to the students of McKinley as Stoner Brett, let out a low chuckle. “Whoa dude. You have, like, China dolls?!”

Sandy resisted the urge to roll his eyes. This was the last time he sold to anyone who was already high on something.

“I’m getting impatient Brett,” he said. “I have some sweet magazines waiting at home for me that I’m itching to get to. Do you want the stuff or not?”

Brett stared for what felt like another full minute. His brain was so foggy, it took him a spell to comprehend what was actually being said to him. He glanced down at the half-smoked joint in his hand.

“Is that stuff like, stronger than this thing?” he asked, raising the joint.

“Oh yeah,” Sandy said. “This stuff is the best. The chronic lady always satisfies her customers.”

Brett let out a low chuckle once more. “Wicked,” he said, bobbing his head in an unending nod. He stuck his free hand into his pockets and pulled them inside out. All that he found was a baggy of more weed and some joint papers. He had no money on him. “Ah man, all I got is more weed,” he said.

Sandy would rather take money, but if trading the weed for the good stuff was going to get him off McKinley property before someone discovered him there, than so be it.

“Fine, I’ll trade you this pouch for all the weed you have left,” he said.

Brett glanced both directions, almost as if he was looking to make sure no one could see him making this deal. “Cool bro,” he said, holding out the baggy of weed.

The former McKinley staff member took the weed and gave Brett the packet from the chronic lady. “Pleasure doing business with you. Make sure to tell your buddies about the chronic lady,” he said, trying to keep things formal.

Sandy turned and started walking away, leaving Brett standing there as though he’d forgotten how to move. He hurried as quickly as he could to dash into the woods. Running through there would reduce the risk of anyone seeing him leave the McKinley grounds.

But just as he was nearing the tree line, something, or someone, jumped out at him from behind a tree and Sandy leapt into the air in fright.

“Oh my God!” he shrieked. He had just a moment to catch a glimpse of a small silver blade held in the other person’s hand. “What are you going to do with that?” Sandy asked, starting to back away little by little.

Back near the wall of the school, Brett couldn’t take his eyes from the scene. “Whoa, I must be seriously trippin balls right now. Cool,” he drawled.

Sandy’s attempt to back away from the figure was thwarted when his foot tripped him backwards in a pot hole. He threw up his arms with a lame scream when the silver blade came down and stabbed him, once, twice, three times directly in the chest.

As he lay there on the pavement, jerking and trying unsuccessfully to apply pressure to his wounds, he was able to just make out the words the figure was saying.

“You just got poked. Poked by the dagger.”

Brett was watching the scene unfold with heavy lidded eyes and wonder on his face. Had he not been high, he might have realized the scene in front of him was not a hallucination at all. But Stoner Brett was almost never not high.

He continued to watch as the figure stabbed the dagger into Sandy’s near motionless body, stepped over it and began walking towards him.

“Whoa, I’m meeting a murderer,” Brett drawled. “Wicked.” He couldn’t tell who they were because their face was covered. And even if it hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have remembered later or made the connection at all because he was so high.

“Wanna play a game?” the figure asked when it came within earshot of the teenager.

“Now I’m talking to a murderer,” Brett said in a floaty kind of voice. “Okay man. Games are better than homework.”

The figure indicated for Brett to follow them, and the stoner boy trudged along behind as they led the way to some outdoor stairs. The stairs could just be made out to go all the way up to the roof. Not very many people at McKinley knew this way existed. They really only thought there was just one way to get up there. The main internal stairwell.

“Whoa, we’re like, going so high dude,” Brett said. The figure said nothing, just continued climbing until they reached the ladder that was the last few steps.

“Not afraid of heights, are you?” the figure said, glancing back at Brett, one hand on the ladder preparing to climb.

Brett shook his head. “Are you joking? I’m always high, dude,” he said. Clearly, he hadn’t registered the difference between heights and being high, but that didn’t matter. It meant this game would be a piece of cake.

The figure turned and began climbing the ladder. Brett watched in awe for a moment before following.

When they finally reached the roof, the figure stood close to the edge and looked at Brett. “Did you know weed is a better way to give you wings than Red Bull?” they asked.

“Really?” Brett said, and the figure nodded. “Far out!”

“Do you want to see?” the figure asked. Brett bobbed his head the same way he had at Sandy earlier. “Then all you have to do is stand on the ledge, spread out your arms, and jump.”

Brett looked from the figure to the ledge and back to the figure again. “That’s all?” he said, maybe a slight bit disappointed it was so easy. The figure nodded their head. “Cool! Alright, here I go!”

The stoned teenager stepped up onto the ledge and put out his arms. He swung them a bit as his balance wavered.

“On the count of three,” the figure said. “One,” and Brett let out a chuckle. “Two.” Brett started to flap his wings like a bird. “Three!” The stoner leapt from the ledge with a happy laugh that quickly morphed into a scream as instead of flying like he had expected, he felt himself falling through the air.

“I’m not high enough for this!” The words were the teenager’s last as moments later he hit the ground with a crack and lay still.

A close up would reveal his face had been crushed in as it hit the pavement, his eyes remaining wide open, obvious terror mixed with the usual clouds written in them. And the blood quietly seeped into a puddle around his head.

“Poor poor Brett,” the figure said. “All he ever wanted was to fly.” They cackled, turned and ran into the dark atop the roof.

…

Sue Sylvester stood behind the punchbowl, her hands clasped behind her, dressed in her traditional tracksuit. She didn’t need a scary costume to be intimidating. She just needed to stand tall with that trademark haughty expression on her face and the kids all ran in the other direction.

But tonight, tonight there was no haughty expression on her face. In fact, the expression she wore on her face was unreadable. So far though, no one had noticed, so thankfully, there had been no questions to ask why.

“Sue!” said a voice and the woman’s attention was drawn to the wide doe eyes of the ginger haired guidance counselor.

“Emma, how nice to see you,” Sue said, catching the other woman off-guard. Emma Pillsbury stepped back and looked at Sue, her eyes going impossibly wider. “Is something wrong Emma?” Sue asked.

“Are you feeling okay Sue?” she responded.

Sue nodded. “I am well, thank you for asking. Would you like some punch?”

Emma was completely confused. Where were the taunts? Where were the insults? Where was her pension for calling Emma anything but her actual name? The guidance counselor shook the questions from her head. Now was not the time to pry.

“Yes, I’ll have some punch,” she said instead, watching as the woman ladled the drink into a glass and handed it to her, just like any normal server might. “Where’s your costume?” the woman asked as she took the glass. It was then that Sue became aware that Emma was appropriately dressed as a deer.

“I don’t need a costume, I’m frightening enough without one,” Sue said, a small smile gracing her face. A smile that Emma realized actually looked sweet.

“Oh well, I better get back to my rounds,” the ginger woman said, politely excusing herself. She didn’t know what was going on with Sue, but the way she was acting terrified her.

_ Don’t find the body and you’ll be okay, _ Sue thought, holding the smile to her face. She stood there, offering punch to the students and politely ladling it out for them. It didn’t escape her that the students were acting in the same manner as the guidance counselor. Finding ways to get away from her fast. But that was nothing new. However, she was oblivious to the fact that it was due to her  _ not _ acting like her usual self than anything else.

It wasn’t until she saw one of her admittedly favorite students coming back towards the refreshment table, that she really had any other exchange than passing punch out to scurrying students dressed as ghosts and witches and vampires.

“Hi Coach Sylvester,” Kurt said, voice unusually quiet. Sue watched in slight concern as the boy suddenly squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.

“Kurt,” she said. “Are you alright?” Kurt’s eyes popped open in surprise.

“Did you just call me Kurt?” he asked in a bewildered tone of voice.

“Of course,” she said with a slight laugh. “It is your name, isn’t it? Unless you’d rather I be more formal and address you as Mr. Hummel.”

The pale boy was stunned into silence for a moment. Sue Sylvester had never just outright called him Kurt. Not that he could recall anyway. Ever since she’d given him the option, it had always been Porcelain and before that, Lady Hummel and a bunch of other different things, including the direct ‘Gay Kid.’

He only stayed silent for a beat however, switching his helmet to his other arm and deciding just to let it go. “May I have some punch, please?” he asked.

Sue nodded her head and moved to ladle him some punch. But if Kurt thought her acting normal and polite was strange enough, that was nothing to the steady gaze she held on his eyes the entire time she was filling the glass. The look made him uneasy and he subconsciously put the helmet on his head so she couldn’t stare into his eyes anymore.

“Here you go, Kurt,” she said, still as politely as before. She handed him the glass.

“Thank you Coach,” he said, feeling a lump form in his throat. Why was she acting like this? And why had she been staring at him like that? If not for how uneasy the cheerleading coach was making him, Kurt might have just continued to stand there by the refreshment table as he had been earlier. Instead, he walked away from the table, hoping that he looked casual and not completely flipped out.

…

Blaine was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and humming along to the P!nk song on the radio, several cup carriers stacked on the floor of the passenger side. While it was true his dad had cut him off after he came out, he still had a rather large trust fund from his maternal grandmother, and he wasn’t opposed to spending some of it to treat his coworkers to a round of coffee now and then, especially on nights like tonight, where people tended to run amok in the name of fun.

As he passed the empty lot just before Maple Wood St, and the wooded area that separated it from the high school, he decided to cut through to Jackson street behind the school. As he turned the corner, something caught his attention in the headlights. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it kind of looked like a shoe, toes pointed up. He might have just imagined it, it was off the road, in the wooded area, but he hadn’t made the fast track to detective by not paying attention, so pulled over to investigate.

He pulled the small flashlight from his glove box, and climbed out of the car, checking both ways before crossing the road. He pinpointed where he thought he saw the shoe, and shined his light. 

At first he thought he must have just imagined it, because he didn’t see anything that looked like a shoe now. Shaking his head, he began to turn back towards the car. And then the flashlight caught on what appeared to be pink fabric. He frowned as he took a step towards it, and realized it was a man’s shirt. It took another step forward before he noticed the knife sticking out of a human chest.

Well fuck. He supposed the others would just have to drink cold coffee as he fished out his radio to call in his find.

…

Inside the gym, things had just started to pick up. The majority of the student body had arrived. Well, those who had been planning to attend the dance. A group of three cheerleaders, calling themselves the Unholy Trinity were standing around at the side of the dance floor. One was dressed as a hippie, one a Snow Queen, and the third as Daisy Duke.

“This blows,” Santana said, shifting her drink. She stared down at the glass of punch, handed to her by a completely unrecognizable Coach Sue. It was like someone had just put on a bodysuit of the cheerleading coach and was ruining the woman’s reputation for intimidation.

“I never thought I’d say this,” Quinn started, “But dances were more fun when Figgins asked us to play them.” Beside her, Santana snorted. Her long raven hair hung around her shoulders in waves, a leather headband circling the crown of her head.

But the Latina suddenly paused and her head sparked up as she glanced around the gym. “Wait a minute, has anyone even seen Figgins?” she suddenly asked. Quinn and Brittany exchanged looks with each other. It wasn’t until their friend had said something that either of them had realized, they hadn’t seen the principal either.

“That’s strange,” Quinn replied. “He’s always present at school functions and now that you bring it up, I don’t think I’ve seen him even once.”

“But Quinn,” Brittany piped up. “You’ve been to his office before!”

The other blonde shook her head. “No, Brittany. I mean I haven’t seen him once tonight.”

“Oh,” Brittany said in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.

Santana was still, eyes staring around the gym. They may have come with New Directions, but that didn’t mean they all had to stick together the whole night. Tossing back the rest of her unspiked punch, she made a beeline for someone in the middle of the dance floor.

“Yo, Frankenteen!” she called out, approaching Finn who had no trouble displaying his knack for having two left feet while Rachel tried her best not to look awkward dodging them while she danced.

The tall boy in the red ranger costume turned in the direction of the Latina hippie now approaching him. “Huh? Santana?” he questioned.

“Santana!” Rachel cried out in slight aggravation, a bit miffed the other girl had interrupted their dancing.

“Can it man hands,” Santana quipped. She crossed her arms over her chest and gave them both a serious look. “Have either of you noticed Figgins around here?” she asked.

Finn and Rachel glanced at each other, an awkward moment given they were both wearing their ranger helmets.

“You haven’t seen him either?” Rachel said after a moment. It was the ‘either’ tacked on at the end of the sentence that kind of unnerved Santana. She frowned, knowing in that moment that neither of them had seen the principal at all. Maybe this was something she should call attention to.

Without another word to the two Power Rangers, the teenager turned on her heel and began making her way towards the DJ booth. She didn’t give a damn what they said over there. She needed to make an announcement.

…

“Hey Wilde!” A young blonde girl wearing a cat costume turned around at the sound of her name. “Coach told me to tell you, that you’re in the running to be the next Quinn Fabray,” Becky Jackson said as she made her way over to the girl.

Miss Wilde, or Kitty, as her name was, looked contemplative for a moment. It was no secret that Quinn was her idol, but there was just one thing that didn’t sit well with the freshman.

“Does that mean I have to get pregnant next year?” she asked. Becky stared at her for a moment before letting out a laugh.

“Yeah right. As if Coach would let it become a tradition that the new captain has to get pregnant their first year as captain.” If that were the case, she and Santana would both have been pregnant by now. Becky knew Coach didn’t want pregnant girls on the team anyway.

Kitty scoffed, looking down at her cat claws and studying them like she would her regular fingernails. “Good,” she stated. “I idolize Quinn, but there are some levels I won’t even go to, to be on top.”

Not far from where the two girls were having their conversation someone stood with a drink in hand, watching them and narrowing their eyes. Oh no. This couldn’t be allowed. The world did not need a second Quinn Fabray, even if she would come to power after the real Quinn graduated, there was just no way it could be allowed to happen.

“It’s time to find out if felines really do always land on their feet,” the observer muttered. “Of course, this one better hope she does because I reckon she unfortunately does not have nine lives.”


	4. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here is the next chappie guys! Any guesses what's going to happen next?
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome!

Blaine had worked homicide scenes before, but most of them had been death by gunshots, and usually involved domestic violence. This poor schmuck had been stabbed at least a half a dozen times, nearly eviscerating him. They had found baggies of marijuana on him, making it look like a possible drug deal gone wrong.

It was fairly dark out, so they had brought out several generator powered lights to search for any evidence they could find. So far all they’d found was gum wrappers, cigarette butts, and a couple of used condoms. Just peachy.

He spotted a small piece of fabric snagged on a broken branch. It was hard to tell what color it was as he called one of the techs over to photograph it before it could be bagged and tagged. The CSI had just finished labeling it when a shrill scream pierced the night. The sound had come from the high school. Blaine had almost forgotten there was a dance going on there tonight.

He and Carmichael, who unfortunately was the other detective dispatched to the scene, both took off running towards the sound. Blaine, naturally being the younger, healthier, and more fit of the two, easily reached the scene first.

His first thought was that the girl was being assaulted by the boy who was tugging her back towards the school. That was until he almost tripped over the body sprawled out on the sidewalk. Or what was left of it, anyway. The impact had shattered most of his bones.

Well double fuck, Blaine thought as a wheezing Carmichael finally caught up with him.

“Oh geez, the kid reeks of weed,” the older detective muttered out as he tried to catch his breath. “Must have gotten so high he walked right off the roof.”

Blaine frowned. He didn’t believe in coincidences. “You think he’s the one who offed the guy in the woods?”

Carmichael shrugged. “Highly possible.”

Blaine wasn’t so sure.

…

After the talk with Becky, Kitty had slipped out of the gym to go powder her nose in the girl’s bathroom. For a freshman, she sure thought very highly of herself. Besides, the extra powder would ensure her painted cat nose would stay on all night and the sweat from dancing wouldn’t wash her makeup off.

Of course, wandering around alone when there was a killer on the loose was not a smart idea, especially for blonde girls. However, Kitty didn’t know there was a killer on the loose. And as of yet, no one else did either.

She bent over the sink so she could get a closer look in the mirror, her little cotton ball covered in a generous but not overdone amount of powder. She was just dabbing at her black cat’s nose when suddenly, the lights flickered.

“What in the world?” the girl asked, standing up straight. She still held the cotton ball in her hand, but had quickly lost interest in powdering her nose.

She waited, but the lights seemed to stay stagnant once again and she started to turn back to her task.

Just as she was raising the cotton ball back to her nose, the lights flickered again. “Oh come on!” Kitty couldn’t fathom what could possibly be causing it. The weather was unusually warm and clear out for this time of year in Ohio. So it wasn’t like harsh winds could be tripping the powerline.

This time, she didn’t bother to go back to powdering her nose and slipped the cotton ball back into her shoulder purse, powder and all. Reaching up, she turned to fix the cat ears on her head, glancing again in the mirror.

Once more, the lights flickered. However, this time, when they returned to stagnant, they left her in the dark. The freshman wrapped her arms tightly around herself. She didn’t know what was going on, only that she needed to get the hell out of the bathroom.

Cautiously, she pushed open the door and stepped out into the hallway. The lights appeared to be off in there too, but unlike the bathroom, she was not left in pitch dark, thanks to the windows. Moonlight streamed in, dimly lighting the hallway and though she wouldn’t admit it out loud, it looked really creepy like that.

Still hugging herself, Kitty decided that she should just get back to the gym and tell a teacher about the lights.

Slowly, the girl began walking in the direction of the gym, her cat tail swinging with the sway of her hips.

She had just turned the corner into the hallway that would lead her back to the dance when she stopped still.

Standing in the middle of the hallway was a figure. They were standing with their hands behind their back. Kitty blinked.

“Who-who are you?” she asked, cursing the stutter in her voice.

“Do you really think you can live up to the great Quinn Fabray?” the figure asked her.

Kitty narrowed her eyes. Someone must have overheard her conversation with Becky. “Do you realize it’s rude to eavesdrop on others conversations?” she asked.

The figure chuckled. “Answer my question Pussycat,” they said.

The freshman girl crossed her arms and glared at the figure. “No. I will be better than Quinn Fabray. She may be my idol, but I have learned from her mistakes. When I am on top, I won’t do anything that knocked her off her pedestal.”

Again, the figure chuckled. “You seem to forget that Quinn has always gotten right back up, even with some struggle. Tell me Pussycat, can you fall off a pedestal and climb back up the ladder?”

Kitty was quiet for a moment. What gave them the right to treat her like this? She was Kitty Wilde, the freshman star Cheerio. She was going places and they...they were probably just a lonely little nobody trying to make themselves out to be bigger than they actually were.

“You can’t talk to me like that!”

“‘You can’t talk to me like that,’” the figure mocked. “Oh what a privileged bitch you are. At least Quinn has morals.”

Kitty scowled and stamped her foot. Clearly, she was not used to being treated like less than a queen.

“Let me break it down for you privileged princess,” the figure said. “Quinn will always hold the queen bee crown and you, you won’t be around to see the day she leaves McKinley in her golden carriage.”

The teenager went still. What the hell were they talking about? What did they mean she wouldn’t be around to see Quinn graduate?

She didn’t have time to pose the question aloud because in the next second, she found herself staring down a crossbow, and where the hell had they gotten it? It had to be a joke, a prop from someone’s costume they must have stolen. There was no way they could have gotten their hands on a real one, right?

“You know it’s amazing what you can find in the mall these days if you just know where to look. Ohio is the best state for these kinds of weapons,” the figure said.

Kitty felt her throat go dry. She took a step back. And then another. And then a third, before she turned on her heel to run.

“That’s right Pussycat. Go ahead and run, will make target practice that much sweeter.”

The teenager let out a frightened cry, but the music in the gym was so loud it would have drowned her out had she been running towards it.

“One...two...three!” the figure counted. They released the arrow on the crossbow.

_ Fwop! _

Suddenly, Kitty felt pain split into her head and her eyes rolled upward in just enough time to see the point of the arrow come out of her forehead. The impalement produced very little blood, save for a thin trickle sliding down the bridge of her nose.

For a moment, the girl was frozen. And then, her balance crumbled and she fell forward to the floor.

She stayed motionless on the floor as the figure approached her. “Hm,” they said, tapping their chin thoughtfully. Their eyes fell on a nearby bulletin board and underneath the covering of their face, a smile slid into place.

Leaning down, the figure grabbed the girl by her arms and dragged her over to the bulletin board.

…

Kurt was not having fun. Honestly, he’d been feeling off all night. Hell, he’d been feeling off since sometime in the middle of the school day and he couldn’t figure out why. He kept trying to go over it in his head, but it was to no avail.

Finally, he chalked it up to just feeling down on his birthday. That was a plausible explanation. On top of that, he was tired. Finn had been loudly playing Call of Duty in his room until the wee hours of the night, making it difficult for Kurt to sleep. He hated the thought of doing it but he was going to have to tell Carole that she needed to put her foot down on school nights because Kurt needed his beauty rest.

His eyes fell on Finn who was still dancing with Rachel. He was standing by the side of the dance floor alone. He’d been talking to Mercedes for a spell but Sam had swung by and asked her to dance. She’d been hesitant to leave him, but Kurt had urged her to go on and dance. He knew how much Mercedes really liked the blonde boy.

Now with his punch glass once more empty and no desire to return to the refreshment table in fear of Sue staring him down again, he decided no one would notice if he went to get some air.

Leaving his empty glass on a nearby table, Kurt made his way to the doors and stepped out into the hallway. It wasn’t far to one of the backdoors that he knew was open.

However, it appeared that he wasn’t going to make it. A group of people stepped out of the intersecting hallway and blocked his path. Front and center was a guy wearing a long black hooded robe and holding a scythe. A poorly painted skeletal face peered out from under the hood.

“Going somewhere ladyboy?” the robed person said and Kurt recognized immediately who it was. He rolled his eyes. “You seem a little skimpy for a superhero. Especially one as powerful as the great Green Ranger.”

“White was more powerful,” said one of Karofsky’s minions.

“They’re both the same person you idiot!” Karofsky snapped. “Anyway, shut up! You’re ruining everything!”

Clearly, if they were trying to be intimidating, they weren’t doing a very good job of it.

“Don’t take art lessons,” Kurt muttered, looking directly at the bigger boy. Karofsky bared his teeth, clenching them tightly.

“You have awoken death from hell fag! And tonight he comes for you!” the boy shouted. Kurt thought that Karofsky had suddenly become delusional, or maybe it was a slow progression over time. Either way, he didn’t know what the hell the boy was thinking, talking like that.

“Haven’t you had enough?” he dared to ask.

Karofsky sneered, but the effect was lost with the badly painted face. “Not until you’re dead!” he screamed.

Kurt’s eyes were suddenly round as saucers. It dawned on him that this time, Karofsky might actually mean it! And hell, if he got away with it, Kurt was going to haunt that fucking police officer for the rest of his days for refusing to do anything sooner.

But now was not the time to be planning his afterlife. Now was the time to try and keep himself from one right now. Turning on his heel, Kurt sped off down the hallway. There were two things he had on Karofsky. One, he was in better shape than the large jock. And two, he was a damn fast runner.

Kurt whipped around a corner, deciding now was not the time to carefully plot out an escape route. Now was the time to move fast and take as many twists and turns as he could to make it harder for Karofsky to find him.

The boy put the helmet back on his head as he dashed down a flight of stairs. It was easier to run without having to carry it. And while he would have rather gone up to the second floor than down to the basement, the split second decision was made based on the fact that Karofsky was more likely to chase him up the stairs.

He dashed into the basement hallway and came to a stop, breathing heavily against the wall. He listened, hearing the thundering of footsteps fade out as they climbed higher. He was right. Karofsky thought he ran up.

It wouldn’t be long before the jock discovered Kurt was not on the second floor so he took off again, speeding through the basement to the lesser known stairwell and back up the stairs to the ground floor. These stairs spit him out somewhere near the guidance counselor’s office. He frantically looked around, knowing he likely didn’t have a lot of time before Karofsky and his minions came thundering back down.

That was when his eyes fell on a janitor’s closet. If he could get in there and shut the door before Karofsky and his minions had the chance to enter that hallway, he might just be safe. Though he had no idea how long he was going to have to hide in there for.

With another glance back over his shoulder, Kurt rushed over to the closet and pulled the door open. He dashed inside and shut it.

He was surrounded by pitch darkness, but that was okay. He couldn’t risk turning on the light.

Kurt felt his way to an overturned bucket and wrinkled his nose as he sat down and took the helmet off.

Just then, he felt his foot knock into a mop and the mop fell. Instead of the clacking sound Kurt had braced himself for, he heard a muffled thud. Before he could question what it was, something heavily fell into his lap and he let out a yelp, quickly clapping a hand to his mouth. He listened for a moment but heard nothing and decided to take the risk. He had to know what had just fallen on him.

He reached up a shaky hand and grasped the cord for the light. One tug and the closet was flooded with dim light. He was thankful it wasn’t overly bright but the decision to turn it on quickly turned into a regret as he glanced down at his lap.

Blood had smeared itself down the front of his costume and it had come from the clotting residue of a slit throat. There, lying in Kurt’s lap, was Principal Figgins and unless the pale boy was mistaken, he was very, very dead.

…

Blaine had taken over the second crime scene, while Carmichael had gone back to the drug dealer. He’d interviewed the two teens who had discovered the body. The unfortunate couple had slipped out of the dance to sneak off to the parking lot so the boy could smear the girl’s make up in the backseat of his car. Blaine had rolled his eyes at that. 

They hadn’t actually seen the boy fall from the roof, but while it looked pretty cut and dry that this was an accidental suicide, Blaine had to investigate all possibilities. As the CSIs had swarmed the body and the surrounding area, Blaine had been trying to figure out how the boy had gotten on the roof.

He almost missed the set of stairs that led up the side of the building. They weren’t very easy to find, situated between two buildings, and surrounded by trees. Blaine began the climb, but wondered if the boy could have managed the stairs on his own if he was as high as they believed he’d been. The teen couple had identified the boy as a known stoner who rarely was seen when he wasn’t higher than a kite.

He reached a small ledge that only went part way around the building, but didn’t go all the way to the area where the boy had been found. Returning to the point where the stairs were, he noticed the ladder going further up to the actual roof. 

As he neared the top rung, he noticed a dark smudge on the right side. Cautiously using his left arm to brace himself, he fished a swab kit from his jacket pocket and collected a sample. It had been hard to tell the color of the smear against the dark grey metal, but the red stain on the white cotton swab was very telling in the limited moonlight. Whose blood was it, though?

During the medical examiner’s inspection of the body, he had noted that there was no blood on the boy’s hands. If he had stabbed the drug dealer, he should have had at least some traces of blood from the knife, unless he’d been wearing gloves. 

Blaine sealed the kit, and slipped it into his breast pocket. He’d have to label it later. Careful not to contaminate the smear until it could be photographed, he continued up to the roof.

It had rained a couple of weeks ago, and at some point there had obviously been puddles of rain water, but now they were just patches of dried mud. Blaine easily spotted the boy’s footprint near the edge, but there was also a partial footprint that didn’t match the tread on the boy’s sneakers. It was possible the print was from a maintenance worker or someone else who had a legitimate reason for being on the roof. He radioed the CSI to come photograph the blood and the footprints, and check for anything Blaine might have missed, and then headed to the main stairwell that led into the school.

This stairwell was nothing like the main stairwell at Dalton, where Blaine had gone to school. This one was dark, and dirty, and smelled like a cat had used it recently as a litter box. The joys of public schools, he thought to himself. He searched the third floor, and then headed down to the second floor. He’d just reached the second floor landing when he heard running feet and boys shouting at each other all the way down on the opposite side of the hallway.

Blaine drew his taser and began to run towards the shouts. The clanging of a metal door being slammed open alerted Blaine to the fact that the boys were most likely running down another set of stairs, probably the firewell, and he kicked up his speed. He found the second set of stairs and raced down them to the first floor, bursting through the doors just in time to see the boys converging on a tall, thin person in a green power ranger costume who had just stumbled out of a door about halfway down the hall.

The mob of boys, who Blaine now noticed were dressed as Death and his minions, grabbed the lone figure and began shoving and hitting them.

“Police! Freeze!” he shouted, but no one seemed to hear him.

…

Kurt was too shocked to scream as he jumped up, the body tumbling from his lap. He shoved his helmet back on andscrambled out the door, stumbling in his haste to distance himself from the horrific sight of his principal’s sightless eyes staring up at him accusingly. 

It seemed he’d gone from one nightmare to another as Karofsky and his buddies grabbed him and began shoving and hitting him. He thought he heard someone shout something, but was too distracted trying to ward off the blows to understand what was being said.

He’d fallen face first to the floor, and was trying to crawl away, when the shout came again, this time accompanied by the sound of something heavy being thrown against a locker, and angry voices all shouting at once.

“Lima PD! All of you, hands up,  _ now! _ ” One voice shouted above the others, followed by the same voice talking more softly. “Dispatch, this is Anderson, I’m inside McKinley. I need a couple of units here now. I’ll radio my location when they get here.”

Kurt heard a shuffling sound, and then the unfamiliar voice spoke again. “Don’t move! Keep your hands in the air where I can see them.” He could hear the stranger pushing the other boys around, instructing them to put their hands on the lockers and spread their legs.

“Man, you ain’t no cop!” Azimio whined.

“Oh yeah? Well then I guess I won’t get kicked off the force when I beat the crap out of you for resisting arrest!” There were more grumbles from the other boys, but Kurt’s heart was racing too much for him to understand. He’d curled up into the fetal position, and was most likely in shock.

He flinched when gentle hands brushed his shoulder. “Easy there, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to make sure you’re alright. Do you mind if I take off your helmet?”

Kurt didn’t recall replying, but guessed he must have given some sense of approval, as the gentle hands carefully removed the head covering.

...

Blaine was kneeling on the floor beside the boy and realization hit him after he pulled the helmet off. “Wait a second, I recognize you,” he said. He remembered the boy and his father coming to the police station about a charge of bullying. It didn’t take long for him to put two and two together. These must have been the kids he was referring to. The young detective felt anger clutch in his chest. Like hell would he let such a sweet kid go unnoticed like this.

Blaine didn’t condone bullying. He knew first hand what this boy was going through. And one of the reasons he’d become a cop was because when he’d been dealing with it, the police hadn’t really done anything to help him either. He hated that they’d just brushed it aside. He wanted to do something about it.

“Don’t worry,” he told the boy gently. “They aren’t going to get away with this. They’ll be punished.” It was as he was trying to help the boy up that he noticed the red smeared across the costume and he frowned. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

The boy shook his head and seemed to find his voice again finally. “The principal,” he said. Blaine narrowed his eyes in confusion.

“What about the principal?” he asked.

The teenager pointed a finger at the door Blaine had seen him stumble out of moments earlier. “He’s dead.”


	5. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go guys, the next chapter. Warning for stronger graphic violence.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome!

Back in the gym, things had taken a slightly confused tone. Santana had shoved the DJ out of the way and used his microphone to inform the party-goers that the principal was missing. Granted, the incident had got her in trouble and now she was locked in a classroom, for doing something important.

“That’s the last time I ever try to help humanity,” she noted as a couple of teachers she didn’t know had escorted her out of the gym.

For the most part, it seemed that the majority of the people at the dance weren’t taking her announcement seriously. Some people had laughed, others had cheered, but all of them seemed to think it was a Halloween prank.

The only people who did believe her, had all reconvened together at the side of the dance floor.

“This is serious,” Rachel said. “They can’t just cart Santana out like that!”

“I agree,” Mercedes commented.

Quinn shook her head. “Santana’s reputation has something to do with it,” she said and everyone looked at her. “She’d be the kind of person to pull a stunt like that.”

The boys all glanced at each other, though it was hard to read the expressions on Finn’s, Puck’s, and Sam’s faces as they were all still wearing their helmets.

“I know Santana is a bitch,” Tina started. “But I also know her well enough by now to know that she wouldn’t joke about something like that.” Tina had a point. Claiming the principal was missing, was low, even for someone like Santana.

“Besides, she’s not the only one who noticed,” Finn threw out.

The group fell into an uneasy silence, none of them picking up on the eyes that were watching them. Someone in the room knew Santana had been telling the truth. Because someone in the room had already found the body.

The silence was broken a moment later by Brittany, who voiced a completely different problem altogether as she glanced around her group of friends.

“Hey, where’s my dolphin?” she asked. It wasn’t until she’d said something that anyone else had noticed Kurt was missing.

“Oh dear God, please no,” Mercedes whispered.

…

Karofsky grumbled, arms crossed over his chest and shifting in his seat. This chair was too damn small. His eyes darted around the empty classroom as he thought of ways to get back at that so-called cop. Nobody threatened David Karofsky with jail time and got away with it.

The jock glared down at the marks on his wrists. They hadn’t been handcuffed but the cop that had handled him had a vice like grip. He wondered if he could charge him for that. He’d look into it later.

He got up out of the chair and moved to the door, peering out the window beneath the map of the United States hanging over it. He was locked in and he couldn’t leave if he wanted to. He wanted to. It was one of those times he actually wished that he was a scrawny kid because maybe then he’d be able to fit in the vent. Of course, if he was a scrawny kid, he probably wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place.

Dave slammed a fist on the door and growled before conceding defeat and walking back towards his chair. The police intended to question him. What about, he had no idea. But there wasn’t a whole lot they could ask him about beating up the fairy.

The boy paused for a moment as a sudden wave of panic swept over him. If he ended up going to court for this, he would have to tell the truth, and telling the truth meant…

He growled. No! They couldn’t force him to come out like that. If anyone found out that Dave Karofsky had been bullying Kurt because he himself was in the closet, everything he had worked so hard for would go down the drain.

It was at that moment that a sound met his ears and he whipped his head up and stared at the door.

The lock was jiggling. Was someone coming back for him?

No, it wasn’t jiggling like a key in the lock. And damn Kurt for telling the cops the principal was dead. They’d found the master keyring on Figgins’ body. That’s how they’d been able to lock him in the classroom in the first place.

That aside, the sound at the door was almost like someone was picking the lock and Karofsky froze.

He gripped the table as he heard the distinct click that suggested they’d been successful.

The door swung open and…

“What the hell?!” Karofsky questioned. He was angry, not afraid, glaring down the figure that stood in the doorway in a position that suggested they were leaning on something, but the jock couldn’t tell what.

“My my my,” the figure said. “You’ve been a naughty boy haven’t you David?” Dave didn’t say anything. He just glared. “What’s the matter? The cat can’t have your tongue. She’s already dead.”

“Huh?” Dave suddenly squeaked. What did the figure mean by that? “You got some nerve barging in here!” he shouted, finding his composure again.

“It’s hardly barging when I opened the door so...expertly,” the figure replied.

Dave found his eyes drawn to what the figure could possibly be leaning on. A chuckle filled the air.

“Oh, you want your present already do you?” the figure asked and Dave’s eyes darted back up to their covered face. He blinked, not sure he wanted to know what the figure had on them after all.

Slowly, the figure began to enter the room, picking up the object on which they had been leaning. Dave’s first view was the end of a wooden handle and he swallowed, attempting to step backwards but being thwarted by the desk behind him. He stumbled around it and took a step back into the open aisle of the classroom.

“There’s really no way around me,” the figure said. “Unless you want to dare to run.”

Eyes widened as the figure took several more steps into the room and Dave finally got a full view of what was in their hand.

An axe.

Despite things, he laughed. “You’d be an idiot to try anything now. There are cops all over this place! They’ll hear you!”

The figure chuckled. “Yes, I thought about that, and while initially it would have been so delicious to hear you scream, I’ve already come up with a solution.”

Dave stepped back again. He was trying to show that he was not afraid of them. But he was failing miserably and his one saving grace was that none of his friends were around to see him cowering like a little girl. Like a little fag.

“It’s interesting David,” the figure said. “Were you aware that this axe can be used in more ways than one?”

“What do you---”

He didn’t get the chance to finish the question because out of nowhere, the figure brought the handle of the axe up and slammed it into the underside of his jaw. David saw stars and felt pain blooming like he’d never felt before. He tried to open and close his mouth but found he couldn’t move it.

“I’d be careful trying to talk if I were you. Broken jaws aren’t fun,” the figure said, laughing.

Without a working jaw, Dave had effectively lost the ability to scream. He looked to the open doorway in pain and horror, hoping someone would happen to come along and stop this figure. Arrest them.

He would have no such luck.

The next thing David knew, was pain blooming in his back. He hadn’t even noticed when the figure had taken the axe and swiped his feet out from under him. He was now lying on the hard tile floor.

“Now it seems you have a few things that have been infected David,” the figure said. “Unfortunately, I’m going to have to remove them.”

Dave’s eyes were wide. He didn’t have a clue what the figure was referring to, but he really didn’t want to know. He tried to prop himself up on his elbows to scramble out of the way, but his back was too painful to hold himself up. He wondered if he’d broken any vertebrae.

The figure took the axe and started pointing it at him in random places. “One potato, two potato, three potato, four.” They tsked as the axe landed in perhaps the worst place it possibly could and Dave frantically shook his head. “Such a shame. I’m sure some boy would have loved it.”

All the color drained from Dave’s face as he realized what was about to happen. And he wasn’t going to be able to scream.

The figure raised the axe and swung it down hard into Dave’s groin and the boy experienced the worst pain he’d ever felt in his life.

Blood splattered the floor, now flowing freely from the gaping wound.

“Forgive me, this is the first time I’ve performed a castration. Sorry it’s a little messy,” the figure said.

Dave wanted to emphasize the little messy part but he couldn’t talk because of his jaw. Drool was starting to trail from the corner of his mouth because he couldn’t control it. He felt slack jawed, which was kind of an understatement.

The pain was overwhelming and he wondered if the cops could get here fast enough, would they be able to reattach little Karofsky?

Deciding to just ignore the pain in his back, he struggled to move away from the figure. If he could somehow turn around, he could back towards the open door and maybe be able to crawl to freedom. It would be agonizingly painful, and tears blurred his eyes, but when you were fearing for your life, there was nothing you couldn’t do.

To Dave’s great surprise, the figure didn’t try to stop him as he fought through the pain to start scooting himself around on his elbows. Disconnected sounds and huffs filled the air because he couldn’t really articulate actual words. Drool was now pooling at both corners. But Dave didn’t care anymore. All he cared about was getting away and for that fleeting moment, he thought the figure just might let him.

“Awww, poor injured Davey,” the figure said. “Does it hurt to move?” Dave tried to glare at the figure, but it was unsuccessful because he could only partially contort his face. Tears were leaking from the jock’s eyes. He’d never let anyone know that he had been crying. “You’ve been such a bad boy,” the figure went on, shaking their head. “Perhaps you want to apologize.”

Even now, with his life possibly on the line, David Karofsky was too proud to ever authentically apologize, but if it would save his life, he would say it, even though he didn’t mean it. He shakily nodded his head.

More laughter came from the figure and they shook their head. “It’s too bad I don’t believe you. Do you know what I do to liars, David?”

Dave didn’t respond. He was pretty sure he knew exactly what the figure did, but he was terrified to mention it either way. The apology didn’t work and he wasn’t entirely sure why he’d thought it would. He must have been desperate.

“It’s rude not to answer when someone asks you a question,” the figure said, shaking their head again. “Lucky for you, I’m done playing games.” Dave’s eyes grew wider still as he watched the figure bring the axe up above his head. He tried to scramble faster, but to no avail.

The axe swung down through the air, and embedded itself in the tile floor, blood suddenly oozing down both sides, as Dave Karofsky’s head rolled away.

…

Blaine followed the sound of music until he located the gym, searching for someone in charge. He’d left the pale boy in the empty nurse’s office, where the boy had all but passed out on the bed. He’d looked so young and fragile, Blaine had just wanted to cuddle him and assure him that he’d be safe from now on.

Shaking his head, he pushed open the door to the gym and stepped inside. He spotted a redheaded woman speaking to a man in a sweater vest in one corner, and began walking towards them, but was stopped by a woman in a tracksuit, who appeared virtually out of nowhere.

“I don’t recognize you, and I know every student in this school. Who are you?”

Blaine pushed aside his jacket to show her the badge hooked to his belt. “Blaine Anderson, I’m a detective with the Lima Police Department. I need to speak to whoever is in charge.”

“Well, as luck would have it, that would be me, as Principal Figgins hasn’t bothered to show his miserable face as yet. Sue Sylvester. What can I do for you?”

Blaine studied her face for a moment. She was very good at schooling her expressions, but Blaine was very good at reading people’s faces. He had a feeling this woman already knew why he was here. But rather than giving away the game, Blaine played along. “I’m afraid there has been a serious incident on school grounds. Principal Figgins is dead.”

Normally, Sue Sylvester would be all for a game of cat and mouse, but even she knew when a situation was serious. Like that stint the previous year when she’d been principal and her dear sweet porcelain was having trouble with that bully. She was quite sure he was still having trouble with that bully but that was beside the point.

“Did you find the body?” she asked, turning completely serious. Playing cat and mouse with a police officer probably wasn’t the smartest thing anyway.

Blaine was surprised she’d come out and mentioned it. “You seem to be ahead of the curve here. If you already knew he was dead, why didn’t you call the police?”

Sue sighed, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t know what you are talking about. I said he hadn’t shown up, and you said he was dead. I assume that means you found his body.”

The young detective shook his head. Maybe he was reading too much into this, but he tried not to think about it. However, there was something about this woman that kind of grated on his nerves. He was going to have to keep an eye on her. His senses told him she knew more than she was letting on. He knew who she was so he could always have someone take the master key and go search her office.

“Very well,” he ended up saying with a nod of his head. He handed her his card. “We’ll still be on site investigating for a while. Please call if you remember anything else.” He started to turn around to leave when he remembered something. “Oh! It’s probably a smart idea not to let the kids know about this,” he added, nodding his head and turning to sweep from the room.

“Damn right it’s a smart idea Detective Bert Reynolds,” Sue muttered after the cop was out of earshot.

…

With things as unsettling as they were, Quinn was not entirely convinced they should be splitting up, much less leaving the gym right then. Sure, it was Halloween and it was true this whole thing could just turn out to be one elaborate prank, but the Cheerio had a nagging feeling in her gut that it wasn’t.

She walked slowly along the hallway, mostly because she was wearing like four inch heels, but the effect added to her costume, which in and of itself was intimidating. The cool blue and white dress flowed freely down to the floor in a semi-full skirt and an elegant diamond crown was placed atop her blonde head. To complete the ensemble, she held a diamond encrusted scepter in her right hand.

Regardless of her attire, Quinn had never felt less like a Snow Queen in her life. The principal was missing and now one of the most cherished members of New Directions was missing.

“Kurt?” the blonde called out, coming to a stop at an intersection and glancing around for any sign of the boy.

Something down the hallway to her left caught her attention. It was far down near the end of the hall so she couldn’t tell what it was. However, the fact that it seemed to be protruding from the wall held her attention. What could possibly be sticking out that much?

Slowly, Quinn turned down the hallway in question and started to walk forward, her eyes fixed on that thing at the end of the hall.

Partway down, she felt the skirt of her dress brush against something and she stopped to look. The trash can that was usually right under the water fountain had been pulled out a bit and as she looked down at it, Quinn felt her heart stop.

In the trash can, which she realized now had its lid removed, was what looked like the end of a piece of wood with some attached string. It also appeared as though someone had rooted through the trash to try and cover the object. Quinn wasn’t sure she wanted to know exactly what it was. She stepped away from the trash can.

Now she was caught, did she continue to find out what was sticking out from the wall, or did she abandon this little side-quest and keep looking for Kurt?

Although she was unnerved by the unidentified wood and string in the trash, she decided she needed to see this through. If there was something unusual in the trash can, it was proof that there might be something else around that maybe shouldn’t be there.

If this was all part of a joke, it was one hell of a joke.

Collecting her skirt and holding her head high, Quinn continued down the hallway in the same direction.

She was only a few feet away when she stopped and not because she wanted to, but because she felt frozen and like she couldn’t move a step.

There was a bulletin board on the wall, one Quinn remembered well because it had been littered with prom queen campaign posters last year.

However, now, she couldn’t see anything that was pinned to the wall because to her horror, she was staring at a girl who had been pinned to the wall by her hands. The thin sticks of wood topped with feathers sticking out of her hands were undeniably arrows. And if she hadn’t figured that out, the one sticking out of the girl’s forehead would have clenched it.

It took Quinn a moment to realize who it was. As head Cheerio, Quinn knew every single member of the squad. And this one, this one was only a freshman, but Quinn hadn’t seen so much potential in a newcomer since she herself had first joined the Cheerios.

“Kitty…” she got out in a breathless whisper. The cat ears were amazingly still on the girl’s head, though they’d shifted forward with the lull of her head. Her tail however, had come off and fallen to the floor.

It took Quinn a moment before she startled out of her reverie and realization fully dawned on her. Kitty was dead. Someone had murdered her. And with the presence of arrows she was now starting to discern that the object in the trash can must have been some sort of bow.

Swallowing heavily, the Cheerio turned on her heel and started hurrying back down the hallway as fast as she could. She knew, this was no joke and once she told someone Kitty was dead, all hell was going to break loose.


	6. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter guys! Warning, this one is a bit more gruesome too.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome!

Rachel didn’t want to admit to the fact that she was scared. She wished they hadn’t split up to search for Kurt. Searching dark corridors all by herself felt too much like being trapped in one of those stupid movies where the teenagers are too stupid to live. She wished Finn had come with her, instead of going with the other boys to check the locker rooms and upstairs.

She’d checked several classrooms on this side of the building, heading towards the choir room. She began humming to herself to keep the nerves at bay as she checked the last door before her destination. It was locked, so she moved on.

She entered the choir room, singing  _ Defying Gravity  _ softly to herself. The room appeared deserted. She placed her pink helmet on the piano and crossed around to the other door, beside Mr. Schue’s office, glancing around. No sign of Kurt in here, she thought, and turned back towards the door. She almost screamed when she saw the figure standing there.

“You! You scared the crap out of me!” The figure didn’t move, or even acknowledge her. She took a step closer, frowning. “What are you doing in here anyw-”

Her voice was cut off when the figure’s arm suddenly reached out and caught her by the throat, shoving her back and pinning her to the wall. She’d never realized just how strong they were until now, as the fingers dug into her windpipe, making it impossible for her to speak or scream.

“Don’t you ever shut up?” the figure demanded. “You’re such a selfish bitch, never giving anyone else a chance to shine! But that won’t be a problem anymore, once I silence you for good!”

Rachel tried to struggle, to break the figure’s grip, but they squeezed harder, even as their other hand came around from behind them and forced something into her mouth. At first, she thought it might be some kind of gag, but it felt weird, like part of it had gone down into her throat.

Her attacker then pulled something else from the utility belt on their outfit, and held it up for her to see the small plastic flask. They smirked at her. “Hydrofluoric acid, eats through glass and metal!”

Before she could react, they forced her head back and began pouring the fluid into the funnel that had been shoved into her mouth. The moment it hit her throat, her eyes went wide with terror as she felt the acid begin to burn her from the inside out. 

Her attacker released her, stepping back as both of her hands went to her throat as she began to gag and choke. Blood began to ooze from her mouth, as steam began to rise from her neck. The flesh and bits of cloth began to fall away as the acid ate through the muscles and cartilage and white collar of the ranger costume.. It seemed to take forever for her to slump to the floor, where she continued to writhe as her esophagus was completely destroyed, and her vocal cords dissolved.

As a finishing touch, the figure grabbed a stack of sheet music from the top of the piano and unceremoniously dumped it on her. With one last, long look at Rachel’s slowly stilling form on the floor, they turned and stolled out of the choir room.

…

The teens in the gym were still blissfully unaware there had been any deaths. And no one had overheard the cop talking to the cheerleading coach. They were all too distracted by dancing and refreshments and playfully attempting to scare their friends.

Indeed, the only people who noted that anything was afoot, were the New Directions, who had all returned to the gym in time after being unsuccessful in their search for Kurt.

“Any luck?” Mercedes asked as she joined the group. The looks on her friends’ faces were enough to tell her that there had been no luck for them either. Worry was high in the group, but there were still a few people who hadn’t returned and that meant there was still a bit of hope that someone had found him.

Rachel, Quinn, and Santana were all still gone, but the latter didn’t count because as far as they knew, she was still locked in a classroom for the stunt she’d pulled at the DJ booth earlier. So really, they were just waiting on Rachel and Quinn.

Suddenly, Brittany looked up, her eyes going wide. “Dolphin!” she shouted and the whole group turned as one towards the door.

Kurt had just walked in sans helmet and hugging himself. His green and white ranger uniform was smeared with something red his friends didn’t dare ask what it was.

“Kurt, oh my God!” Finn shouted, running to his stepbrother and pulling the shorter boy into his arms. Kurt fell in easily and clung to the other boy. He had tears streaming down his face and his hair was a mess. “Where were you?” Finn asked gently.

“I found---” Kurt started to choke out, but before he could finish, he was interrupted.

Quinn came running into the gym at that moment, holding her heels in her hand. She looked frantically around before running straight to Brittany. “Where’s Coach Sue?” she asked frantically.

Brittany opened her mouth to respond, but a new voice answered instead.

“She’s not here.” They all turned to see Santana standing there, admiring her hair with satisfaction. Before anyone could ask the question they’d all been thinking, she answered it. “I picked the lock. I have razor blades in my hair.”

It was a sentiment Santana had claimed many times before so no one really batted an eyelash after that but Quinn frowned. “How do you know she’s not here?” she asked.

“I saw her walk by the classroom I was in while I was picking the lock,” the Latina said. “Why? What’s wrong?”

When Quinn replied, it was in such a loud and frantic voice, it got the attention of all the students close enough to hear her. “Kitty Wilde is dead!”

Silence surrounded the area and you could hear a pin drop. Several of the students who’d overheard her shout went still and just stared at the head Cheerio.

“Quinn,” Santana said, trying to keep her cool. “Are you sure?”

“Yes!” Quinn got out. She threw her hands up so frantically, one of her shoes went flying across the gym. “I found her pinned to a bulletin board with an arrow through her head!”

A choked sound had everyone turning to Kurt, who Finn was still holding protectively. “She’s not the only one,” he said in a strained voice.

“What do you mean Kurt?” Finn asked.

Kurt swallowed and took a moment to regain his composure. “Principal Figgins is dead too. I found his body in a janitor’s closet. That’s why I’m covered in blood.”

“What were you doing in a janitor’s closet?” Tina asked, looking confused.

“Trying to hide from Karofsky and his goons,” Kurt replied, for once being honest about what was going on with the bullying. “They were chasing me.”

Under his helmet, Finn was gritting his teeth. “Where’s that son of a bitch now?” he asked.

“Locked in a classroom,” Kurt replied. “There are cops here. One of them came across Karofsky trying to beat me up.”

The group was silent for a moment, glancing around from one person to the next.

Mercedes was shaking her head. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would a cop just randomly show up at the right time? Figgins never hired any security. There has to be a reason he was on the grounds.” She looked puzzled for a moment and glanced at Kurt. “Did he already know about Figgins?” she asked.

Kurt shook his head. “If he did, he hid it really well when I told him he was dead. He looked undoubtedly surprised.”

“I know why they were here,” said an unfamiliar voice. The group turned to see a teenage girl they didn’t know. She was accompanied by an unfamiliar boy. “Stoner Brett is dead,” she said.

The New Directions’ faces all went wide as they turned to look at each other.

“Okay, no offense, but who would want to kill a random stoner kid?” Sam asked.

“Who said he was murdered?” Puck said.

Before any of the others could respond the unknown girl piped up. “He fell from the roof it looks like. But the cops couldn’t decide whether he’d unconsciously committed suicide or someone had pushed him off. We found his body.” She sniffed and shuddered at the memory.

“So you called the cops?” Mercedes asked.

The boy shook his head. “No,” he said. “They were already here,” he realized.

Again, the New Directions all looked at each other.

“Wait, what?” Quinn said. If the boy and the girl hadn’t called the cops and they’d already been there, what had drawn them there in the first place? Clearly, they were missing something.

“I overheard them saying something about a drug deal as we were being encouraged to leave after they interviewed us,” the boy said. “I think maybe Brett might have been making one.” That wasn’t surprising. But did that mean Brett had called the cops? No, that wasn’t likely. The boy was so high as a kite he probably didn’t have enough brain cells left to even think of calling the cops if he was sober.

“So, there must have been another body,” Mike suddenly spoke up for the first time. He was dressed as Charlie Chaplan.

Beside him, Artie was nodding from inside his batmobile costume. “That’s plausible. Or they caught the drug dealer and were instigating an arrest. If he had just been making a deal with Brett, he would have still been nearby.”

It made sense enough to put the cops at the scene, but none of it explained all the deaths.

Santana started pacing. “So we don’t know whether Brett was killed or not. We know from Quinn’s description that Kitty was obviously murdered. And we don’t know whether Figgins was murdered either.”

“He had to have been,” Kurt said quietly. “His throat was slit.”

The group was still for a moment. With two obviously murdered victims, it couldn’t be a coincidence that Brett was dead too.

“Then I guess we better stay on our toes,” Santana said. “I think we have a killer on the loose.”

It was quiet for another beat.

“I think we better report Kitty’s body to the police,” Kurt said.

…

Blaine was inspecting the slain principal’s office, searching for any evidence that the crime had been committed there, but was sure he’d have to have the CSI’s go over the place with Luminol to find anything. The office smelled of bleach and disinfectant, and something else Blaine couldn’t identify. 

Straightening from where he’d been searching under the desk, he let out a little groan as he felt his shoulders pop from all the bending, and reached back to massage his neck. He was getting nowhere with any of the investigations. All they kept finding were more questions. Were the deaths related? And if so, what was the common factor? He’d originally thought the principal might have witnessed the drug dealer’s murder, and had been killed to keep him quiet, but the M.E. had ruled that out. The principal had been dead for at least three hours, while the dealer had been dead less than an hour when Blaine had found him. The boy on the sidewalk had died roughly fifteen minutes after the dealer, although that was just a guess based on how long it took to get up to the roof.

Still frowning, he left the principal’s office and paused in the receptionist’s area. He glanced towards the door to the hallway before turning towards the nurse’s office, deciding to check on the boy before returning to the janitor’s closet to see what the CSI’s might have found. But when he pushed the door to the office open, the boy was gone.

Blaine swore under his breath. How has the boy gotten out without being noticed? He was about to go searching for him, but the moment he stepped out into the hallway, he saw the boy and a few other teens heading towards him.

“Bla-Detective Anderson,” the boy corrected himself. Blaine almost wished he hadn’t. He wondered what his name would sound like coming from the boy’s mouth. “Quinn found another body!”

Blaine’s forehead furrowed. Another one? “Where?”

The blonde girl in the ice blue dress tilted her head. “Down by the girl’s bathroom, on the other side of the gym. Her name is-was Kitty Wilde. She was a freshman.”

Blaine managed not to swear out loud as he reached for his radio once more to call for backup. “Lead the way,” he said, giving her a nod. “The rest of you, go back to the gym and stay there.”

…

Quinn led the detective towards where she had found Kitty’s body. She was still barefoot. And there was no point in putting her shoes back on anyway when she’d accidentally flung one and didn’t know where it had landed.

“How do you know this girl?” Blaine asked from behind her. Quinn glanced over her shoulder at him.

“I know all the Cheerios. Kind of my job, because I’m head cheerleader,” she replied.

Head cheerleader. Blaine should have guessed. “What were you doing in the hallway when you found her?”

Quinn knew her best bet was to tell the detective the truth. She was willing to bet he wasn’t going to hold anyone in the school completely innocent because none of them, including the cops really had any indication who was the killer. It could have been anyone.

“I was looking for Kurt. None of us knew where he was and we were worried, so we split up to look for him. He hasn’t really been himself all evening,” she said with a frown.

Blaine had to wonder what she meant by that but because he didn’t know the boy like Kurt’s friends did, it wasn’t really something he could question. Besides, it was kind of normal for teenagers to act weird sometimes.

“Kurt was in the nurse’s office. I took him to lie down in there after I rescued him from those bigger boys,” he explained. He didn’t miss the relieved expression on Quinn’s face before it was replaced with a tinge of anger.

“Karofsky,” she said in a low voice.

“Pardon?” he asked.

“David Karofsky,” Quinn stated louder, looking at him again. “That jock has had it out for Kurt since before I knew him. Most of us in the New Directions went to middle school with Kurt. but I went to a different school. I do know that Karofsky has been bullying him at least since freshman year and it has progressively gotten worse. Although Kurt won’t tell us anything.” She looked chastised for a moment. “We didn’t know it had escalated to physical assault.”

Blaine was quiet. If Kurt’s friends didn’t know the extent, they likely didn’t know the jock’s reason for it either. One thing was for sure, he was going to get some answers from the boy later.

They rounded a corner into another hallway and Blaine took note of something strange near the other end.

“She’s down there,” Quinn pointed. “But I think there’s something else you should see too,” she added. Blaine was curious what else she could possibly have to show him.

Quinn led him to the trash can beneath the water fountain and pointed to the wood and string. “I didn’t know what it was when I first came down here, but after I saw her body, I think it’s some kind of bow,” she told him.

Blaine pulled out his radio to inform whatever backup was coming to bring extra gloves before turning back to Quinn. “We’ll take a closer look at it. Why do you think it’s a bow?” he asked.

“Because she’s pinned to the bulletin board by arrows in her hands and there’s another arrow through her head,” the girl said in perhaps the most deadly serious voice Blaine had ever heard a teenager use.

He was so glad he was past the years when things like this used to make him grimace. But now he had mastered the art of the straight face. “Thank you Miss…”

“Fabray,” Quinn supplied.

“Thank you, Miss. Fabray,” Blaine said with a nod. “I’ll take it from here. You can return to your friends if you’d like.” He gave her another nod and pulled out a pair of gloves of his own as he continued down the hallway to the body.


	7. Chapter Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go with chapter six guys! I hope you're all invested! Lol. This one may surprise you.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome!

Kurt was still shaken up, but he had long since stopped freaking out over the blood on his costume. At least it was a Halloween costume, and not one of his actual outfits. It wasn’t like he was ever going to wear it again after tonight. But the point was that it was stained with _blood_ of all things.

His friends took turns making sure he was okay, though a part of him was getting kind of miffed that they were all babying him. This was exactly what he hadn’t wanted.

“I’m fine guys, really!” he got out, spreading out his arms in emphasis. “Go dance! Go have fun! It’s what we came for!” Nobody thought it wise to point out that Kurt hadn’t been having fun. That was probably the wisest decision the entire club had ever made.

A random teacher walked by the few New Directions that were still skeptical to leave Kurt alone, pulling a bigger girl by the arm.

“Miss. Zizes,” the teacher was saying. “If you can’t keep your character to fictional representation, we will have to ask you to leave the dance.”

Kurt raised an eyebrow. Everyone knew who Lauren Zizes was. And it was no surprise when the teacher’s comment didn’t phase the girl.

“How do you expect me to emanate wrestler if I’m only supposed to pretend to fight?” she said nonchalantly.

The teacher narrowed his eyes. “Giving Sandra Carver a real bloody nose is not acceptable Miss. Zizes. That may be okay during an actual wrestling match but you are at a school function. If you wish to stay in this gym, you will be wise to remember that.”

“I swear that girl is off her rocker,” Mercedes said, pulling Kurt away from the exchange. He turned to look at her as Lauren and the teacher walked away and shrugged.

“She likes wrestling. Can you really Blaine her?” he asked, missing what he’d actually said.

Mercedes stared at him. “Don’t you mean blame?” she said, giving him a quizzical, yet somewhat knowing look.

“That’s what I said,” he replied.

The dark skinned diva shook her head. “No boo, you said _Blaine_ ,” she told him, a somewhat laughing grin on her lips.

Kurt went even paler than usual, which made the blush that colored his cheeks even more prominent. Clearly he was distracted. And he needed to do something to keep her from teasing him.

“Mercedes, will you go get me some punch?” he asked, startling his friend at the sudden change of topic. By that time, the two of them were the only New Directions left on the sidelines.

“Sure,” she said, confusion lacing her tone. “Be right back.”

“Thank you,” Kurt replied as he watched her walk off towards the refreshment table.

…

With Figgins’ body having been found and that detective sticking his nose where it didn’t belong, Sue knew she needed to do something drastic. And by something drastic, she meant to solve the crimes herself. It wouldn’t be too hard. She did know something other people didn’t and she was very good at keeping that something to herself.

She was on her way to her office to pick up the tape. There was no doubt in her mind that detective and his band of legal misfits would try to trash the place. She was not taking any chances.

However, she was drawn from her musings when she felt her foot kick something in the hallway. Sue paused, not sure if she really wanted to look down or not. Clearly, something was in the middle of the floor that shouldn’t have been. And clearly, they needed to keep these hallways lit up when people were present, despite what time of day it was. Maybe now that that cheapskate Figgins was gone, things would change for the better here, all around.

Stealing herself, the cheerleading coach slowly lowered her eyes to the floor and almost wretched, an action that she had never experienced in her life.

Lying at her feet, a trail of dark red behind it, was a human head. The jaw was slack, the eyes wide with terror, the tattered pieces of skin where it had been detached from the neck were already bruising black and blue. Thick sticky clots of blood clung to the stump. But worst of all, she recognized the face staring unseeingly back up at her.

It was David Karofsky.

Collecting herself, Sue stood straight again. Quickening her pace, she followed the trail of blood. It led back to an empty classroom, the door still wide open and the cheerleading coach stepped inside.

She almost wretched for the second time in as many minutes. Karofsky’s body was on the ground, groin covered in blood and a chunk of meat between his legs. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what she was looking at and she swallowed.

Was this their work? The person she’d seen on the tape. Had they committed this murder, too, or was this someone else entirely? She hoped it was someone else.

She was so distracted by the sight in front of her, she missed someone slipping a note across the floor to her and hurrying off.

When she finally turned around with a hand to her mouth, she spotted the yellow piece of paper folded on the floor. _Coach_ was scribbled in crayon across the top.

She picked it up and unfolded it to find a short message, also in crayon.

_Meet me in your office._

_There’s been a devel-devel-develthing._

Becky had never been good with the big words, but she was still better at spelling than Brittany. Sue hesitated for a moment, wondering if the message was actually from Becky. All signs pointed to yes, but she had no way of knowing for sure.

Still, she felt it was a bigger risk not to take the chance. What if it was from Becky and she was in trouble? Sue couldn’t fathom the thought of losing her best friend. Sure, Becky was a student but she wouldn’t deny that the girl was her best friend. She reminded her so much of her sister, who had been the most important person in the world to Sue. No, she couldn’t take the chance that the message was from Becky and she didn’t act on it.

Pocketing the small yellow paper, Sue was all too eager to make her way out of the classroom. There was sticky blood residue on her shoe and she needed to clean it off anyway.

It felt like she had zoned out on the walk to her office because she hardly remembered making her way there when she found herself in front of the door. Cautiously, she turned the knob and opened it.

“Becky?” she questioned, stepping carefully into the room. There was no answer. Her office was seemingly empty. Sue felt an unexplained tension go up her spine. It was an unfamiliar feeling to her. The word tense or any of its variations was not in Sue Sylvester’s vocabulary. She wondered for a moment if Becky might just be playing a little Halloween prank on her and would pop up from under the desk to yell ‘boo’ or something. She waited, but no such thing happened.

“I knew that would get you here,” came a voice from behind her and Sue whipped her head around, noting the figure now standing in the doorway.

“So,” she said. “It was you.” She kept her voice neutral, an expert at giving nothing away. “Why?” she asked.

The figure just chuckled and walked into the room, picking up a pom-pom Sue had just noticed was lying on a chair. Had that been there before? She waited for an answer but the figure said nothing, and she realized she probably wasn’t going to get one.

But Sue had other things on her mind. Maybe she could use this to her advantage. There were a few pesky people she’d like to get out of the way. But as an honorary police officer, she couldn’t be caught with blood on her hands.

“How did you know?” the figure asked after a period of silence hung between them.

“There’s a security camera in Figgins’ office. I saw the whole thing on tape,” she replied, moving to the desk and opening the drawer. She was relieved to see the tape was still there. The cops must not have gotten around to searching her office yet.

“So you moved the body, I take it?” the figure asked next.

Sue snorted. “Of course I did. Do you really think I was going to leave a body where any student could easily come across it?” she asked in a rather harsh tone.

The figure was quiet for a moment. They shook their head. “You wouldn’t have if you thought about possibly leaving your own fingerprints behind,” they said.

“You’re not the only one who remembers to wear gloves, Scream,” she snapped.

The figure growled. “Don’t call me that,” they said.

“Look, I’m willing to make you a little deal,” Sue started a moment later and moved to grab a small pad of paper and a pen. “There are a few people I’d like disposed of,” she went on, scribbling on the top sheet.

If the figure’s face had been exposed, she would have seen them frowning. “You want me to do your dirty work?” they asked. Why was Sue always getting other people to do her dirty work?

“I can’t get blood on my hands and well, you already have it,” she pointed out, ripping the sheet of paper from the pad.

“You do realize they can still get you for murder for hire, right?” the figure replied, crossing their arms.

Sue blanched. They were right. It was a possibility. How could she get out of this one and still get what she wanted out of it?

“Now it’s my turn,” the figure said. “I’ll make you a deal. I just want you to do one thing for me and I promise, I’ll do all your dirty work and no one will ever know you were behind it.”

The cheerleading coach looked at them. She wasn’t entirely sure this was a risk she was willing to take, but Sue was nothing if not a risk taker.

“What’s your proposition?” she finally asked.

There was a chuckle and the figure unfolded their arms. “You say you can defeat any challenge, no matter how eccentric or dangerous,” they said.

“I can defeat any challenge,” Sue replied. “There isn’t a damn thing strong enough to stop one Sue Sylvester.”

A snort. The figure picked up the pom-pom again and held it out to her. “You love cheerleading so much. Prove it. Eat this pom-pom.”

Sue’s eyes widened. It was definitely a strange request, but she never backed down from a challenge, no matter what it was. And they were right. She did love cheerleading. Cheerleading was her whole life. Why not prove it?

She reached out and took the pom-pom from them. It felt a bit dusty and she wondered if it was an older one, but she ignored it. A little dust never hurt anyone. Might make her cough a bit, but that was the worst it would do.

“Fine,” she said.

Sue Sylvester was strange, but no one could have predicted she would actually attempt something like this. Perhaps if she was a known sufferer of Pika, but she was not. And due to her special Sue Sylvester blend, she claimed she hadn’t even had a solid meal since the eighties.

The figure stood there with their arms crossed once again as the cheerleading coach raised the pom-pom to her mouth.

“We have a deal, right?” she said.

“Yes, we have a deal,” the figure growled. “Eat.”

Sue couldn’t fathom why killers could be so persistent. But the very idea barely slipped through her mind long enough for her to stop herself and she bit into the pom-pom, tearing off its strips with her teeth and inhaling a mouthful of the dust.

For a few moments the room was silent, Sue continued to eat the pom-pom and the figure stood there watching with their arms crossed.

Suddenly, the cheerleading coach froze and her eyes widened. The partially devoured pom-pom fell from her hands as they began to shake and one hand flew to her mouth. Foam had begun to gather at her lips and she doubled over.

“What did you put on this?!” the woman choked out, one hand slapping against the top of her desk as she tried to keep her balance.

The figure chuckled. “Oh you know. A little salt, a little sugar, a little cyanide,” they said casually.

Sue could hardly believe she’d fallen for it. She was smarter than that. How could they do this to her? She was fighting to stay conscious, fighting to keep her bearings. And as her eyes started to flicker, she saw it happen.

The figure also doubled over, arms squeezing at their sides. She could make out muttered sounds but she couldn’t understand what words they were forming.

Just as Sue’s consciousness lost the battle, she made out one distinct word coming from the figure.

“NO!”

…

Blaine was swearing under his breath once more as he glared back down the hall at Carmichael. The senior detective had decided to pull Blaine from the murders and sent him off to question the Neanderthal about the assault on the pale boy.

As he turned the corner and headed for the other wing, he cracked his knuckles. He wanted to invite the older man to step into the ring with him sometime, but knew it would never happen. 

Maybe he could take out a little bit of his frustration on the bully. He hated bullies with a passion, and this school was notorious for them. He’d heard the stories…

He stopped and shook his head. He couldn’t be thinking like this right now. If the dumb jock whined about abuse or harassment, Blaine would be out of a job, while the asshole walked free, as usual.

He took a few deep breaths before he started walking again. He kept reminding himself that he couldn’t beat up the jock, no matter how much he wanted to. As he neared the classroom where he’d left Karofsky, he slowed and came to a stop once more as two things became abundantly clear.

First, Karofsky was no longer locked inside the classroom, as the door now stood wide open. And second, he’d just stepped in something slick that he was quite certain was blood.


	8. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter guys! A little snooping so to speak? xD
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome! Only 3 chapters left to go!

It seemed like the majority of the kids at the dance still had no idea what was going on. Most of them were too busy dancing like fools to notice the cops that had come in and out of the room a number of times. But the New Directions never missed them.

Mercedes had gotten held up at the refreshment table because some kid had started arguing with Becky who said she was in charge of the punchbowl while Coach Sylvester was gone.

“What took so long?” Kurt asked her when she returned. And Mercedes thought he looked even more disheveled than she left him. Had she really been gone long enough that she didn’t remember how disheveled her friend looked?

“Sorry,” she said, deciding to forego the truth. “Long line.”

Kurt said nothing as he took the glass of punch she handed to him. It was an easy enough excuse to believe. All these kids were probably thirsty after dancing so much.

The pale boy swirled the punch in his glass and stared at the floor until Mercedes spoke again.

“Hey wait a second,” she said and Kurt’s head jerked up to look at her. He seemed quite jumpy, but who could blame him. “Am I the only one who noticed Rachel still hasn’t come back?”

Kurt nearly choked on his punch and he suddenly felt sick to his stomach. No, not Rachel. Why would someone kill Rachel? Okay, he needed to calm down. He was jumping to conclusions. Just because Rachel was missing, didn’t mean she was dead.

“Don’t worry Mercedes,” he said, trying to sound confident but thinking he was likely failing. He was in no mood to be confident about anything right then. “You know Rachel,” he went on and tried to laugh, but it came out as more a whimper of fear. “She probably got distracted in her favorite obsession. Herself.”

Mercedes looked at the boy. She could tell by his tone that Kurt wasn’t convinced himself that he was right. That didn’t reassure her.

“You don’t believe that,” she said, always one to be straight-forward with her friend.

Kurt sighed. “I’m trying not to think the worst,” he said, looking down at his punch again.

Before Mercedes could respond, a sudden screeching filled the air and several kids yelped, clamping their hands down over their ears.

Everyone turned to see Mr. Schue with a microphone in his hand.

“Oh sure,” Santana muttered. “When he takes over the DJ booth, it’s okay.”

“Santana, he's a teacher,” Quinn said.

The Latina shrugged. “So? Is that supposed to give him more right to interrupt the dance than me?”

No one said anything, mostly because they weren’t sure what to say to her. Santana would fight you if you said ‘yes’ to that question, even though it would have been the truth anyway.

“Hey guys,” Mr. Schue said casually. “Sorry to interrupt the dance but I have a couple of announcements to make.” He paused for a moment, looking around at the students in the gym. How did he tell them this without anyone panicking? He didn’t think he should mention the deaths. “As some of you may have noticed, there are currently cops on the school grounds. I don’t want anyone to worry. They had a situation nearby and are just here as a precaution.”

“Bullshit butt chin,” Santana said. The rest of the New Directions looked at her. Kurt was biting his lip, a nervous habit he had long since conquered.

Luckily, she was too far away for Mr. Schue to hear her. “For safety reasons, we’re asking everyone to stick together and stay in the gym. If anyone needs to use the restroom, please go in pairs or small groups.”

“Why should we?” a rude boy near the DJ booth asked. Quinn and Puck had to grab Santana’s arms as she growled and attempted to go after the boy.

Mr. Schue cleared his throat and put his hands up in a sign of surrender. “It’s just a precaution. The police are worried someone dangerous might still be in the area and they don’t want to put any of you guys at risk. So please, I know some of you might find it childish but if you have to go to the restroom, use the buddy system and go with a friend. Thank you.”

The microphone screeched again as Mr. Schue handed it back to the DJ.

“Is he really not going to tell the truth?” Sam asked suddenly. The rest of the group turned to him and Kurt found himself wondering when all the other New Directions had returned to their spot at the side of the dance floor.

“He’s got a point,” Mercedes pointed out. “We’re high school students. I think we’re mature enough to know the real reason the police are here.”

“We  _ do  _ know the real reason they’re here,” Quinn stated.

Mercedes shook her head. “ _ We _ do,” she said, gesturing to their group. “But they don’t,” she added, waving a hand at the rest of the students.

“Forget about all that!” Kurt suddenly cried and everyone turned to look at him. “We’ve got a bigger problem.”

“Like what, dude?” Finn asked, skeptically. He cared a lot about his brother, but since Kurt had been on edge all night, he did worry that he might not have his thoughts straight.

“Like, where the hell is Rachel?” Kurt responded. All the New Directions looked at each other. Currently, the entire glee club was accounted for. But Rachel was still missing. Mercedes had been the first to notice and Kurt had started to become increasingly irritated that no one else had noticed yet.

A glance over at his stepbrother had him glad Finn was currently wearing his helmet. He was sure he wouldn’t like the look on the taller boy’s face. He could already see Finn’s legs shaking just a little bit and that was all Kurt needed to know to realize the other boy was terrified.

“What are we going to do?” Tina asked after several moments of silence.

“Look for Rachel,” Finn said immediately.

“We’re not supposed to leave the gym,” Artie pointed out.

Finn shook his head a little more forcefully than he probably meant to. “We can leave on the buddy system,” he reminded him.

“We can go to the restroom on the buddy system,” Artie clarified.

Before an argument between the two boys could break out, Brittany suddenly cut in. “Let’s play catch a killer!” she cried happily. It effectively shut everyone up as they looked at her. “I can be the alluring sexy blonde girl!” She turned around and wiggled her ass seductively and Santana couldn’t take her eyes away from the damn shorts. Why did Brittany have to come dressed as Daisy Duke?

“No one’s getting allured by your ass except me,” Santana suddenly growled.

The distraction was enough that both Kurt and Finn had started for the door and were nearly there when they were spotted.

“Where are you two going?” Puck called out.

Finn glanced over his shoulder. “To do what Power Rangers do,” he said.

“Rescue a fellow Ranger,” Kurt added. Because there was always one or a few of them that needed to be rescued in every battle.

Sam, Puck, and Mercedes glanced at each other.

“Wait for us!” Mercedes said and the three of them followed the two boys.

“Are they really going to play Power Rangers right now?” Tina asked in disbelief.

Quinn sighed. “I think Finn and Kurt are too determined to find Rachel to care about the new rules.

“That doesn’t explain the other three,” Mike said. Quinn shrugged.

“Mercedes is Rachel’s other best friend. Puck and Sam kind of just follow Finn’s leadership.” No one said anything. She was kind of right. And Finn was the leader. Sure Rachel had been elected captain a few years back, but everyone knew in the long run, Finn was always the one true leader of the team.

“I just hope they’re safe,” Santana said, one of the rare moments she showed how much she truly did care.

…

“What’s up McKinley Titans? JBI coming to you live from the McKinley High library. I’m here to report that all hell has broken loose at McKinley. There are cops running around the school and why you ask? No one really knows!”

Jacob Ben Israel, self proclaimed gossip king of McKinley had also ignored the new rules, slipping out of the gym to rush to the library so he could film something juicy. Why should he ever pass up the opportunity to do a live story about the cop infestation?

The boy ran his fingers through the afro on his head and smirked at the camera. Normally, he had someone filming him, but tonight he was on his own. So the library was a good place because he could set the camera up on the table and be able to work it hands free.

“Maybe if we venture out into the hall, we might be able to catch an exclusive interview with one of the cops!” the boy went on. Of course, that meant carrying the camera himself.

Jacob froze suddenly, thinking he might have heard the doors to the library swing open. But it could have been his imagination. After all, this was Halloween and on Halloween, your imagination always ran wild.

“Was that the door?” Jacob said into the camera. “Oooo, maybe I’m about to get a spooky surprise!” He chortled with laughter but it was abruptly cut off when someone else’s laughter joined him and Jacob froze again. “Who’s there?” he asked, looking around him.

“Do you really think people are entertained by you?” said a voice. Jacob jumped up out of his chair and spun around, but he didn’t see anyone.

“Hey man, I have a huge following on my Twitter accounts!”

There was chuckling. “That’s funny, seeing as according to some people, you’re one of the biggest dweebs in this school.”

Jacob could feel a fire in his belly. How dare this person! How dare they! “You can’t talk to me like that!”

“Says who?” replied the voice. “Your mommy?”

Jacob could feel his ears burn. He’d forgotten the camera on the table was still running, more concerned with dealing with this invisible idiot. Wait a minute, had he met a ghost?

It was quiet for several moments before Jacob’s eyes landed on a figure coming out partway from one of the nearby bookshelves. The lighting in the library was dim because it was after school hours so he hadn’t noticed the person hiding in the shadows.

“Who are you?” he asked, voice shaking.

“Are you aware that publicly insulting people hurts their feelings? Or did that afro suck all the brains from your head?”

“You’re not very nice!” was Jacob’s only comeback.

“Neither are you,” the figure said. “And I’ve decided it’s time you learned your lesson.”

Jacob swallowed, trying not to show the person he was fearful. “What are you gonna do? Insult me on camera? Hate to break it to you psycho, but people insult me to my face every single day so on camera won’t be any different!”

The figure chuckled. “And yet you continue your little gossip vlog. But to answer your question, no. I am not going to insult you on camera. That’s so lame.”

It took Jacob a moment to realize they had backed up a few steps. He wondered if they were just going to leave without doing anything.

“Teachers are always telling students to read more,” the figure said. “I thought I’d be generous and offer you some books.”

The next thing Jacob knew, one of the bookcases was falling towards him. He turned to run, but wasn’t fast enough. The bookcase knocked him down and one of the shelves pinned his legs to the floor as the books rained down on him.

Jacob let out a howl of pain. The weight of the shelves felt like it was crushing his legs. He pawed helplessly at the floor, refusing to realize he wasn’t going to be able to pull himself out from under it.

There was a hiss. Clearly, the attacker hadn’t planned for Jacob to get somewhat out of the way. With Jacob distracted by the pain, and trying unsuccessfully to pull himself free from the shelf, the figure grabbed the largest, heaviest book he could find.

They approached the struggling teenager who looked up at them with wide eyes.

“Clearly, you need a little more knowledge,” the figure said. And then they brought the heavy book down on Jacob’s head as hard as they could, turning it so that the corners of the book were the first to make contact. Jacob fell forward, the book now lodged in his head. He jerked a couple of times on the ground and then went still. “That’s enough,” the figure said and turned to walk out of the library.

What the attacker hadn’t been aware of, was the camera that was still filming on the table. And though the blow to Jacob’s head was hard enough to splatter it with backlash, it had also caught a gloved hand and just enough of the arm to expose the fabric of their sleeve.

…

Blaine was smirking to himself. The look on Carmichael’s face when he proved he hadn’t been lying. As soon as he’d found the blood back at the classroom, further investigation had revealed a horrendous scene. He found Karofsky’s body on the floor. He had been mutilated below the waist and his head was missing. He’d immediately radioed Carmichael to tell him he’d discovered the neanderthal dead and the asshole had called him out, saying he was lying to have an excuse to investigate more deaths instead. So Blaine had flat out told him to come see for himself. They were still looking for the boy’s missing head.

The young detective was currently speaking on his phone to a colleague back in Westerville. The case was becoming larger than the Lima department could handle alone so he was calling in reinforcements.

He paused mid-sentence however when something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye.

“Officer Milltower, I'll call you back. Something just came up,” he said. After a few more words exchanged, Blaine hung up his phone and turned to face what had caught his attention.

As fate would have it, it was a locker. It looked no different from any other locker in the school, or in any school for that matter. Blaine would have never given it a second glance. But there was a slight difference to this particular locker.

It was ajar.

The opening was slight enough that any untrained eye would have missed it. But Blaine was trained to catch even the smallest of clues. He made his way over to the locker, wondering why it had been left open.

The young detective hesitated as he reached a hand out to pull the locker the rest of the way open. He didn’t have a right to search it. No warrant or any other official right. If he opened it now, that would be an invasion of the student’s privacy. But there had to be a reason it had been left open.

Swallowing his own protests, Blaine slowly pulled the locker open. The first thing he noticed were the pictures on the inside of the door, and he had to smile. But his attention to the locker door decor didn’t last long when he caught a flash of something in the locker and turned his head to look into it properly.

Sitting there on top of a neat stack of books, was a familiar green helmet. It suddenly dawned on Blaine whose locker he was looking at.

Curious as to why the boy would just stash part of his Halloween costume in his locker - because why bring it if you aren’t going to wear it - he reached in and pulled the helmet out. That was when something dropped to the floor.

Blaine glanced down. A card was lying at his feet and he set the helmet back on the stack of books to bend down and pick it up. It only took a moment for him to realize it was a driver’s license.

“Of course,” the young detective said aloud. “He must have stashed it here so he wouldn’t lose it at the dance.” It was then that he noticed the birth date on the card. “October 31, 1993. That means today is his eighteenth birthday.” He frowned. “I wonder why no one is wishing him Happy Birthday.”

Deciding he’d been invasive enough for having no official right, Blaine carefully put the card back in the locker and shut the door. Though at the last moment, he left it slightly ajar as it had been when he found it. He had no way of knowing whether the pale boy was aware his locker was open. So it was safer to leave it as he’d found it. He only hoped the boy wasn’t one of those people who meticulously memorized exactly how they left everything.


	9. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys, almost to the end! Just one more chapter after this and then the epilogue which will be posted on Halloween. But be ready for this chapter! The start of the truth comes out! Dun dun dun.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome!

Santana was beginning to feel like a caged tiger. She didn’t like the fact that her friends had left the gym in search of Rachel. She didn’t like the fact that the adults that were supposedly in charge weren’t telling them the truth about what had been going on. Hell, she didn’t even like the fact that so many people were staring at Brittany’s Daisy Duke shorts.

“Come on,” she said, grabbing the blonde girl by the hand and pulling her out of the gym.

“Where are we going, ‘Tana?”

“We’re going to find Coach Sue and find out what the hell is going on here!” Santana figured if anyone was safe from a crazed killer, it would be their equally insane cheer coach. Nothing scared Sue Sylvester.

They passed a surly looking older detective, who demanded to know why they had left the gym.

“We’ve been stuck in there for over an hour with nothing to do but drink punch. My bladder is about to explode,” Santana glared at the man.

“Detective Carmichael,” another voice called out from further down the hallway. “I think we found it!”

The older man glared back at the two girls, before calling over his shoulder. “I’ll be right there.” He spoke to the girls once more, leering at them. “I suggest you hurry up and do your business, then get your pretty little asses back to the gym as fast as possible.”

If Santana weren’t already concerned about the safety of her friends, she might have made a comment about sexually harassing underage girls, but instead waited until his back was turned and flipped him the bird, before rushing down the hallway towards Sue's office, still holding Brittany’s hand.

She slowed down as she noticed the office door was open, a feeling of relief washing over her. Sue would know what was happening. She’d help them find their friends. 

But the relief fled as she noticed the light was out in the office.

“I don’t like this, Sany,” Brittany said. “I want to go home and hide in the closet with Lord Tubbington.”

Santana didn’t like it either. Something felt terribly wrong. “Wait right here, Britbrit. I’m just going to see if Coach Sue is in there.” She tried to give the blonde girl a reassuring smile, but wasn’t certain it came across that way. She let go of the other girl’s hand and took the last few steps to the doorway.

At first she didn’t notice anything, the office seemed empty. She was about to turn and step back away from the door when something caught her attention. Was that a pom-pom? Frowning, she took another step forward, and saw the outstretched hand, the cuff of a tracksuit just visible in the dark.

No. That can’t be what she thought it was. There was no way someone could get the better of Sue Sylvester. She took a couple more steps into the room to see better. The frown on her face deepened as she saw the top of the blonde head sticking out from behind the desk.

“She’s not dead,” Santana whispered to herself. “She’s unconscious, that’s all.” 

Another step closer. Another, and one more. She saw the foam that had dribbled from the older woman’s mouth. The sightless eyes still showed absolute shock at what had happened.

Santana rushed out into the hall and hurled.

…

“Rachel!” finn called out. Kurt thought it was kind of pointless to cup his hands around his mouth when he was still wearing the helmet. However, he stayed silent. Now was not the time to be chastising his stepbrother.

“Where could she be?” Mercedes asked. The lot of them had been wandering the school in search of their Pink Ranger for she wasn’t sure how long. But it certainly felt like forever.

“Maybe she’s hiding in the auditorium,” Sam suggested. “It’s big enough for her to hide and not be found, right?”

Ironically, the auditorium was the one place none of them had thought to look. They were perhaps too wound up and with a killer on the loose, she could still be anywhere, not just the obvious.

Essentially, if the killer was someone who did their homework on their victims, they’d know exactly where to look for Rachel. If she was smart enough, she’d hide somewhere unexpected. But none of them were in a state of mind to think that logically.

Puck jiggled the handle on a classroom door to find it just as locked as the other doors. He let out a growl. “This is getting us nowhere!” he shouted.

“You need to calm down,” Mercedes said. Puck just glared at her.

“She’s right,” Kurt said. It was the first time he had spoken since the five of them had come together after a short split search. “Getting aggravated isn’t going to help us find Rachel.”

Instead of helping matters, his words set Puck off into an angry tangent and the others chased after him a few feet as he marched off down the hall, banging his fist on lockers as he passed them.

“Kurt!” The pale boy turned his head sharply to the right at the sound of his name. It sounded kind of echoey and not all that loud, but it was still clear. He glanced back at his friends, but they gave no indication that they’d heard anything and were still trying to get Puck to calm down.

“Hello?” Kurt called out, turning to face the direction of the voice.

“Kurt, I’m stuck in here! Please, help me!” It was only at these words that Kurt realized the strange voice sounded like Rachel. Again, he glanced back at his friends, and again they didn’t seem to notice anything.

_ You don’t need their help. You can rescue Rachel, and really feel like a hero, instead of just dressing up and pretending to be one. _ Kurt wasn’t certain where the thought had come from, but it was true. He could save Rachel on his own. Everyone else was too busy bickering.

The pale boy considered telling his friends he was going to check out something, but the last thing he needed was more of his friends fawning and babying over him. Sure, he was having a shit Halloween and a super shit birthday, but that didn’t mean he needed to be coddled every single minute.

“Kurt please help me!” he heard the voice again. It was all he needed to make up his mind. With one last fleeting look at his friends, he jogged off down the hallway to the right.

…

Carmichael glared at the two people standing in front of him. The woman had the brightest red hair he’d ever seen, while the man wore a sweater vest that made him want to douse his eyes with bleach. 

“What do you mean, they wandered off?”

The man cleared his throat and moved so that he was slightly shielding the woman. “You told us not to tell them there was a murderer on the loose, so they aren’t aware of the possible danger. They’re teenagers, and they have the attention span of a gnat. Unless there is an xbox or playstation in front of them, they are going to get bored!”

The older man looked like he wanted to spit nails. “Then why didn’t you have teachers watching every exit?”

It was the woman surprisingly who spoke up, always her polite, neat self. “With all due respect, Detective Carmichael, this is a school, not a prison.”

Carmichael could feel the vein in his forehead throbbing. Halloween was always the worst night of the year. Between the vandalism, pranks, crank calls, and drunk party goers, they were almost always busy on Halloween. But in his thirty some odd years on the force, he could not recall a single Halloween night like this. He wanted to snap at the woman, who looked like she might faint if he so much as called her an impolite word, but knew it would do him no good.

“Sinclaire!” He called out to a passing patrolman. “Call everybody in. We need to search the building from top to bottom, and find all the kids that have wandered off. Find them and escort them back to the gym. Lock them in if you have to! I don’t want them contaminating my crime scenes!”

“What a jerk,” the woman whispered to the man who merely nodded his head. All he could think was he hoped that the cops wouldn’t harm the students.

…

Blaine had reached the point where he was ready to make like Lord of the Flies and roast Carmichael on a spit. Teenagers got antsy. It was a fact of life! Did he really think that the kids were just going to behave themselves and stay put in the gym? Honestly, Carmichael should feel damn lucky he wasn’t dealing with the Warblers of Blaine’s high school years. Now that would have been a headache, to put it lightly.

Still, his priority was making sure the missing kids weren’t hurt. And that none of them had the misfortune to come across another body. So far, the police hadn’t been notified of any more but the way this night was going, you could never be too careful.

His thoughts kept drifting back to the pale boy and the fact that today was his birthday. Some birthday! What kind of gift was having a dead body fall on top of you, or getting beat up by kids who had no real reason other than they hated you? A shudder rolled through Blaine. Even now, more than a decade after the last taunt had come his way, he could still picture the terror perfectly. It was his strongest reason for becoming a cop.

Blaine paused in his step, finding himself outside the library. He knew the likelihood of anyone actually being in there was low, except maybe to sneak away to makeout. Other than that, what teenager willingly went in the library?

However, something in his gut told him he needed to go inside. Besides, Carmichael would probably have his head if he found out Blaine hadn’t searched every nook and cranny. The young detective rolled his eyes.

Carefully, he pushed open one of the double doors and peered inside. “Hello?” he called out. He didn’t get an answer. So, he stepped into the room. He wasn’t too keen on being loud in a library, but there was no one there to disturb. “Hello?” he tried again a little louder.

There was still no answer and Blaine kept walking forward. Until his foot kicked something. He glanced down to see there was a book on the floor. And it wasn’t the only one. Another lay just a couple paces away and when he raised his head in that direction, he saw a whole trail of books littering the floor.

“Well, that’s certainly normal,” he stated sarcastically. He moved further in the direction the fallen books were leading until he spotted a video camera sitting on the end of a table. Confusion laced his features and he hurried over.

The scene that met him made him inwardly groan. A bookcase had been toppled over. And beneath it and the array of books lay a motionless boy. He was half-pinned beneath the fallen bookcase. But the worst part of all was the large heavy book embedded in his skull. Blaine grimaced.

“This is Anderson,” he said, raising his radio for what felt like the billionth time that night. “I’ve got another one. Library.” He sighed and shook his head. How many more bodies were they going to find that night?

As he waited for backup, something else caught his eye. The red light on the camera was on.

Blaine snatched up the camera so quickly, it escaped his mind that he should have put gloves on. If the red light was on, that meant the camera must have been recording when this boy was killed. Maybe, just maybe, it had caught the killer. This was without a doubt the strongest piece of evidence yet. And there was no way Blaine was turning it over to Carmichael. That man did not deserve all the glory. He didn’t even give a damn about these kids.

Glancing around, the young detective spotted a door against the back wall. It probably led to a library office. Perfect. He could still be close at hand, yet out of the way enough, none of the cops who came for the body would be able to interrupt him.

Blaine hurried over to the door and was relieved to find it unlocked. He slipped inside. He was right in thinking it was an office, but it wasn’t that large.

Pulling out the desk chair, Blaine took a seat and pressed the button to rewind the tape. He wasn’t sure how many minutes of emptiness in the library had passed since the boy’s death. But he did notice the film was timestamped, which would make it easy to determine time of death.

He must have been distracted slightly, because he nearly missed seeing the book be brought down on the boy’s head and something blipped by backwards.

“What was that?” he said in a harsh whisper. Outside the office, he heard the sounds of officers entering the library.

Quickly, he stopped the video and pressed play. You could just make out the top of the boy’s head as he struggled to free himself from the bookcase. So it was clear he’d been alive after the bookcase fell, though that didn’t surprise Blaine. If it had killed him, there would have been no need for the heavy book.

He watched as swiftly, the book came down and there was that flash. Blaine hit the pause button so hard he was surprised he didn’t break it off. But it was in enough time.

Displayed on the screen was the book, which nearly filled the lens. But there was just enough room to catch a gloved hand. And right at the edge of the frame, was part of the arm, enough to make out the color of the sleeve.

The young detective sat there frozen solid for a good five minutes, trying to comprehend what he was looking at. He swallowed heavily, giving his head a solid shake. That was when he heard his name being called from the library.

“Detective Anderson?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right out!” he said, without really registering it. The proof may have been subtle, but it was all he needed. And sometimes, Blaine really kind of hated this job.

…

Azimio had never found himself so bored. He wished he could have just gone home. But the cop who’d let him out had told him he needed to stay on the premises. Apparently, there were bigger fish to fry at the moment than dealing with a bunch of punk jocks. The cop’s words, not his. But while they were being let free, they weren’t allowed to leave..

The dark skinned football player had been over this stupid dance the moment he’d even heard about it. Dressing up was for little kids. What he really wanted to be doing was driving around, getting drunk, and teepeeing people’s houses. It was all about the tricks these days. But no, instead he was here at this lame dance.

Sometimes he cursed the fact that he was Karofsky’s best friend. But he was always going to be loyal and support him.

Though Azimio wouldn’t say as much aloud, after three and a half years, picking on the same kid was getting old. He’d first met Karofsky their freshman year of high school. Despite going to the same middle school, they’d never met before that.

Sure, he never tired of watching the twink squirm like a worm on a hook, but he wanted to expand his horizons a little. What was the point of being proud to be a bully if you only picked on one kid?

It was that question that kind of made Azimio wonder if his best friend was really a bully at all. Why did Dave focus all his concentration on one kid? It didn’t make any sense. But Azimio knew better than to ask that question aloud.

He’d long since disposed of the black robe, leaving himself in just the jeans and t-shirt he’d shown up in. Ironically, he hadn’t seen any of his football buddies.

“This sucks,” he muttered.

“I don’t know about this, but I know about who,” said a voice. Azimio whipped around in the hallway. Standing not too far away was a figure, a rather familiar looking figure. However, he could recall seeing a couple of people wearing the exact same thing as this particular person. On the other hand, there was only one he knew to have the distinctly added details to the front.

“What do you want?” Azimio growled, crossing his arms and standing to his full height. He could take this freak on his own. He was sure of it. Karofsky would be so proud.

“I think the real question is, what do you want?” the figure asked, and that was when Azimio got a confused look. He knew exactly who was wearing this particular costume. However, he also knew the voice he was hearing did not belong to the person in the costume.

“Are you using a voice changer?” Azimio asked, glaring.

The figure scoffed. “Do I look like I’m holding one of those stupid little gadgets?” they replied, raising their hands and wiggling their fingers.

“You could have it in the helmet,” the jock pointed out.

The figure crossed their arms over their chest. “Then I guess you would have heard it earlier, wouldn’t you?”

It was clear to Azimio by now that the figure had caught on the jock thought they knew who they were. But he realized then that the figure was also right. If there was a voice changer in the helmet, he would have noticed earlier. But then if there was no voice changer, he couldn’t have come across this person earlier. Did they maybe steal the costume?

A chuckle filled the air. “He’s not here you know. He is, but he’s not,” the figure said.

“What the hell?” Azimio spit out, not having any clue what the figure was talking about.

The figure chuckled again. “He’s here, but he’s not. I’m sure you’re smart enough to figure out what that means. Or does your jock brain not know the stories?”

Azimio took a step back. What stories was the figure talking about? Whoever they were, they were starting to confuse him, and he did not like being messed with.

“Listen you little freak,” he said, standing up to his full height. “You nearly got me and my guys arrested!” He wasn’t playing games anymore. There was no way this wasn’t who he thought it was. Even if the voice was completely different! It must be an acting thing.

“Oh, that wasn’t me. Well, not me per say. That was my vessel.”

Again with the games. Azimio growled. “Cut the crap lady, this ends now!” He started to punch a fist into his hand. “You’re going down.”

“Oh, a fight. How fun. I have so longed for a chance to get revenge on my own bullies, who beat the life out of me. Literally.” The figure chuckled.

Azimio did his best to ignore the uneasy feeling that was building in him. “You’re no match for me pipsqueak!”

“Really? We’ll just see about that!”

At that instant both of them charged forward. Just before they ran head on into each other, Azimio heard the familiar voice he’d been expecting.

“NO!” it shouted and suddenly the figure fell to the side and Azimio barrelled into the stairwell, narrowly catching himself before he fell. He turned around to face the figure with wide eyes.

For a moment, they seemed to be fighting with themselves.

“I won’t let you kill him!”

“You want a bully to live?!”

“It’s not about that!”

“Sure it is! Bullies need to pay!”

“Killing them is just as wrong! It doesn’t solve anything!”

“It solves everything!”

Azimio watched from the stairwell with wide eyes as the figure flew backwards as though shoved by an invisible force. There was a beat and then the figure stood up slowly.

“Now, where was I?” The unfamiliar voice was back. Whatever war that was, it seemed to have just come out the winner. “Oh right!”

The dark skinned football player barely had enough time to throw up his hands as the figure barrelled into him. He was caught by even more surprise at how strong the lithe framed figure turned out to be. They held their own pretty damn well.

Azimio managed to get his hands up to his attacker’s face. He applied pressure to try and shove the figure back from him. But he didn’t have the best grip and his hands slipped, hitting the latches on the helmet. He repositioned and shoved the figure.

The figure stumbled back harsh enough that they involuntarily threw their head back and the unlatched helmet went flying off.

“KURT?!” shrieked an unexpected voice. Both boys turned in the direction of the sound and noticed Lauren Zizes peeking out from around a corner. She had a bag of chips from the vending machine in her hand.

The pale boy looked directly at her, his eyes flashing coldly. “Kurt’s. Not. Here,” he said.

The sound of that unrecognizable voice coming from a very recognizable face was enough to cause Azimio to freeze. The action proved to be his downfall.

With a dark chuckle, Kurt, or the boy who claimed not to be Kurt gave one hard shove to the jock’s chest. The boy lost his balance and toppled over, falling into the empty space behind him, letting out a scream as he fell to the floor, a story below.

Gritting his teeth, the boy in the Green Ranger costume turned to face Lauren. “It appears we have a problem,” he said.

“W-what?” Lauren was appalled at her apparent ability to stutter. She stood to her full height and stared the boy down.

“I can’t have you running around loose after that. There are cops in this building. You’ll run directly to them and ruin everything I’ve worked for.”

“Kurt what the hell?!” Lauren grit out. She was completely thrown off-base. Never in a million years would she have guessed that Kurt Hummel, of all people, was going around killing others.

“I already told you. Kurt’s not here.”

And then Lauren saw the boy’s face change. It became kind of distorted, like he was fighting against something.

“Lauren run!” That she knew was Kurt’s voice and suddenly she found herself frozen in place. What the hell was going on here?

“You stay out of this!”

“No! I can’t let you kill anyone else!”

“She’ll turn you in!”

“I don’t care!”

“You want to spend the rest of your life in jail?!”

“I deserve it!”

“You’re pathetic! I never should have picked you!”

As with the earlier supposed argument, the boy flew backwards like he was shoved by an invisible hand. But this time, he found himself slowly getting onto his knees. And he stared at the floor.

“You have to tell the police Lauren,” came the weak voice. He sounded broken, like he’d been fighting something for so long. “It’s the right thing to do. He can’t leave the school, so I’ll be free.”

Before Lauren could do anything, another figure ran onto the scene.

“Kurt!” they shouted, almost fainting from the knowledge that yes, it was true. The killer, the person who had been taking all these lives. It was Kurt.


	10. Chapter Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last official chapter everyone! All the chaos is about to come to an end! Tomorrow I'll be posting the epilogue which will wrap it all up with a tattered Halloween bow. As such, I'll give all the thank yous then!
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome!

Blaine stood there staring with his eyes glassy as though he’d been fighting tears. How could it have been this sweet boy? Something didn’t add up.

“Blaine…” came Kurt’s weak voice and the young detective nearly melted. He didn’t care that Kurt had used his first name. That was what he had been wishing for since he’d rescued him earlier. Though he would never admit that to anyone. Except for perhaps Kurt.

But then suddenly, the pale boy was turning to Blaine with darkness in his face. “She needs to die,” he said. “She knows too much.”

The young detective felt like he was caught between a rock and hard place. He already had so many feelings for this boy - though he couldn’t say why - and yet, the right thing to do was cuff him and haul him off to jail. But he couldn’t do that, he just couldn’t.

Blaine needed to think fast. How was he going to keep up appearances while also helping Kurt? That’s when he got an idea and prayed his acting skills weren’t too rusty.

Moving in Lauren’s direction, he placed a comforting hand on the girl’s back. “Are you alright? You aren’t hurt, are you?”

Lauren glanced from Kurt to Blaine and back to Kurt again, Kurt who was looking completely outraged. She was confused by the fact that Kurt still seemed like he was fighting something. He’d been acting so strange the entire time and while she would never admit as much aloud, it scared her.

“I’m fine,” she said, because like hell would Lauren ever let anyone see her afraid of anything, including a cop. She attempted to shrug his hand off.

“Come on,” Blaine replied, raising his other hand towards her arm in an attempt to guide her away. What Lauren didn’t notice however, was that the young detective was concealing his taser in his other hand. “Let’s get you out of here.” Just as he was about to take her arm, Blaine pressed the button and the shock of electricity jolted into the girl.

Lauren stumbled before losing her balance and falling to the floor. Blaine quickly returned the taser to his belt and looked at Kurt.

“Help me move her,” he said, bending down to pick up one of the girl’s arms.

Kurt was all too eager to rush over and help. He grabbed a hold of Lauren’s other arm. “We can drag her down to the basement. No one will ever think to look for her there,” he said, and Blaine was not oblivious to the difference in his voice. He wondered for a spell what was going on exactly, but shook it off. He wanted to help Kurt.

“Are you sure?” he asked as the two of them heaved and started to drag the unconscious wrestler to the stairwell with some difficulty.

“Positive,” Kurt replied. “No one goes down there. It’s been abandoned since 1967.”

Blaine was so thrown off by the exact detail, he almost let go of the girl. “How do you know that?” he asked in surprise.

“A boy was killed down there that year. The staff likes to keep it hush hush, but the evidence is all over the 67-68 yearbook.”

To anyone who knew Kurt, this wouldn’t have been a surprise. The boy was very knowledgeable about the old yearbooks. He’d proven as much during picture week in his sophomore year. But Blaine didn’t know a whole lot about Kurt yet.

Blaine was quiet for a moment. The words had triggered a fuzzy memory of something his mother had told him once years ago. What was it she had said? Something about being present the day some kid was killed at her school when she was a teenager? He couldn’t remember the details, but what Kurt was saying sounded eerily similar to the general facts he was remembering.

“Then why take her to the basement?” he asked after several moments of silent huffing while they pulled Lauren’s unconscious form down the stairs.

Kurt rolled his eyes. “I already told you. Because no one will find her down there. No one ever goes down there,” he repeated.

“I did!” a completely different, yet familiar voice suddenly said and both of them stopped halfway down as Kurt’s face contorted.

“No one gives a fuck about you!”

“That’s not true!”

“Sure it is! If they cared, those bullies would have had their asses busted a long time ago!”

“Coach Sylvester tried to help!”

“And look where that got you!” No reply came this time and he put in an afterthought. “Thought so. Now shut up and let me finish the job.”

Blaine was staring at the pale boy, who seemed to be talking to himself in two completely different voices, while his face couldn’t decide on an expression. What in the world was going on with this boy?

“Keep moving,” Kurt said next, gripping tighter to the girl’s arm and starting down the stairs again. Blaine didn’t have any other choice but to follow him.

They remained quiet as they dragged Lauren down into the basement. It was slow going and by the time they made it, she was starting to come to.

“Quick, look for something to tie her up with!” Kurt said. He picked up the arm Blaine dropped and dragged her over to the wall, watching the older man to make sure he was out of sight. As Lauren’s eyes fluttered a bit and she looked at him hazily for a split second, Kurt smirked. 

“Duty calls,” he said before ripping the sleeve of the ranger costume and bringing up his arm to his mouth. He bit down into his forearm as hard as he could and Lauren barely had time to react before she drifted back out.

Kurt pulled his arm away to note he’d broken the skin and even drawn a bit of blood. He snickered and reached down to pull a knife from its hiding place in his left boot.

Blaine was just coming out of a classroom he’d broken into with an old electrical cord when he heard the girl let out a scream. He raced back to the two of them to see a knife sticking out of her thigh.

“What happened?!” the young detective demanded.

“She bit me!” Kurt responded, showing him his arm. “I needed to stop her before she tried anything more serious!” The look on his face was so genuinely Kurt that Blaine felt without a doubt he was telling the truth.

Blaine’s expression became firm and he hastened to use the cord to tie up the girl, wanting to restrict her from attacking Kurt again.

“You know,” Kurt said, in a tone of voice Blaine thought sounded a bit seductive. “Blood kind of makes me really hot!” Blaine whipped his head around to see Kurt reaching out a hand and swiping it through the wound on Lauren’s leg. He didn’t miss that his extension was jerky, almost as if he was trying to hold his arm back at the same time as it reached for the blood. That was kind of...strange.

Raising his eyes to Kurt’s face made the boy’s next action make almost no sense. He raised the blood covered hand to his mouth, but at the same time, his eyes were wide with terror, as though he was completely frightened and appalled by the actions his own hand was performing.

Blaine couldn’t tear his eyes away and he reached out to grab the hand covered in blood before Kurt could place it in his mouth.

“What are you doing?” he asked, surprised to find his own voice was trembling a little.

“Trying to seduce you,” Kurt replied flatly, that look of horror still in his eyes, or did it just increase? “Is it working?”

The young detective opened and closed his mouth like a fish, searching for the words. On the one hand, Kurt was a student, a teenager, still in school and Blaine was a twenty-seven year old cop. On the other hand, today was Kurt’s birthday, which meant he was now eighteen, so if they wanted to do anything, they wouldn’t be breaking any laws.

Before Blaine could really come to a decision however, he suddenly found Kurt’s other hand grabbing a fistful of his shirt. The boy yanked him closer, and Blaine felt the fingers of the hand he’d caught graze his cheek, smearing the blood across it. The boy was making it incredibly hard for him to stick to his morals.

_ Eighteen, eighteen. You can do whatever you want with him. He’s eighteen. _ The young detective couldn’t figure out where the thought had come from. But it was accompanied by the very strong urge to listen to it.

Blaine didn’t get much chance to make up his own mind because the next thing he knew, Kurt’s lips were on his and oh that’s what seeing fireworks felt like. The young detective didn’t have the strength to stop it even if he wanted to.

…

Kurt had only kissed one guy in his entire life. And that one kiss hadn’t even been wanted. It had been forced on him. But it had answered all his questions at the time, and he’d never said a damn word. Maybe he should have.

Kissing Blaine however, made him feel incredibly floaty and he almost immediately forgave the actions that led to it. His whole body ached something awful. He felt like he’d been to hell and back since sometime that afternoon. But his memory was still hazy. He still couldn’t recall more than a few small snippets of what had happened between fifth period and when he suddenly found himself at home.

His eyes shut and he found himself leaning into the kiss, kissing back on his own because Blaine...Blaine was exactly the kind of guy he wanted to be kissing.

At some point, as he felt the older man’s tongue beg entrance to his mouth, Kurt suddenly felt lighter, like a looming heaviness had been lifted from him.

And then he heard a familiar snicker. But this time, it hadn’t come from his own mouth. Kurt’s eyes popped open suddenly to find the smirky expression on the young detective’s face.

With all the force his aching muscles could muster, Kurt suddenly shoved Blaine away from him, and the detective fell on his backside.

“I don’t want to kiss you!” he shouted. “I want to kiss Blaine!”

The detective slowly stood up, one hand moving to pull the gun from his belt and Kurt swallowed. What the hell was he going to do?

“You know, this all would have been so much easier if you had just shut up and let me handle things,” that voice sneered, raising Blaine’s gun and casually scratching at his temple with the barrel.

Kurt had never felt more scared in his life. What was going on? He started to slowly back away from the detective. Was this all a joke? Was Blaine really a corrupt cop that was playing him the whole time?

That was when he spotted the door to the boy’s bathroom out of the corner of his eyes, and suddenly, the details came slamming back into him like a freight train and his knees buckled.

When he looked up again, Blaine was pointing the gun at him.

“I’ve got all I need out of you,” he said. Kurt’s eyes widened in terror before he remembered something.

“It wouldn’t matter if you killed me or not, you can’t leave this school!” he shouted.

Blaine chuckled. “Minor technicality. I had no intentions of leaving, but it will be so much sweeter to watch you die at the hands of a guy you quickly developed feelings for.” He chuckled again, advancing a few steps closer, the gun pointing directly at Kurt. “Any last words?”

Kurt could feel his entire body shaking. When had this all gone so wrong? Why was he here at the end of his rope, about to be murdered by the very thing that had caused all this in the first place?

“I’ve got some,” he heard next. It was clearly Blaine’s voice that spoke that time and in the blink of an eye, Kurt found himself staring at the most awkward thing he’d ever seen. “Not on your life!” Blaine shouted as he started apparently fighting with himself. His hands were each tugging the gun in opposite directions.

“Let go!”

“No! I won’t let you kill him!”

“You don’t even know me!”

“I know my body does not belong to you!”

In the scuffle between Blaine, Kurt, and whatever this thing was, they had completely forgotten about Lauren. The girl had fully recovered consciousness and used their distraction with each other to pull the knife from her leg and cut the cord off of her. The wound hurt something awful, but she ignored it.

Relieved at her chance to get away, she started for the stairs as fast as her injury would let her.

“NO!”

_ BANG! _

Then they were all still. In the fight for dominance over the weapon, one of them had pulled the trigger. The bullet had caught the escaping girl in the back.

Lauren froze for a moment, her eyes wide and round as saucers behind her glasses. And then she fell, landing with a thud on the basement floor.

Blaine stood there breathing heavily, clearly in shock over what had just happened.

It was Kurt who spoke first. “Freddie, let him go, please,” he said in a quiet voice. “You let revenge go to your head. You used me for your own agenda. You killed people who knew nothing about you or what you went through. I know that’s not something you ever wanted.”

“No one helped me,” Freddie’s voice came from Blaine. “I wanted them to pay for continuing to let kids like us be hurt that way.” For the first time, Freddie’s voice was speaking in that calm, sad tone he’d had when Kurt had first encountered him earlier that afternoon.

“Freddie?” It was Blaine this time and Kurt watched his expression become confused. It seemed to click more information into place and a lightbulb went off in his head. “Are you Freddie Studebaker?” he asked.

Kurt looked surprised. “You know who he is?”

“Yes,” Freddie said in answer to Blaine’s question. He was no longer fighting for dominance over Blaine’s body. Kurt had reached something within him.

Blaine pressed his free hand to his chest. “I’m Blaine Anderson,” he said. “I’m Pamela Hopkins’ son.”

A gasp came from Blaine’s mouth and it was at that moment that Kurt saw his body sort of jerk back a bit and the entity parted from it. The spirit materialized in front of the bathroom door.

“She tried to help you, you know,” Blaine said, looking at the ghost boy.

“I know,” Freddie said. “I saw her pleading with the principal. Unfortunately, even though she had been fast, by the time she was let in, I was already dead.” He was quiet for a moment. “And she was my friend.”

Blaine shut his eyes for a moment. “My mom has always felt guilty for that day. She’s the reason the school stopped using the basement. But she was never satisfied that she’d done enough.”

Before Freddie could say anything else, the sound of footsteps on the stairs echoed in the basement.

“I have to go!” Freddie said hastily and in a matter of seconds, he’d vanished. It was just in time too because a bunch of cops came into view at the bottom of the stairs and stopped short of Lauren’s body, lying on the floor.

“Jesus h. Christ!” Carmichael muttered as he glanced at the girl. “Another victim?”

“No,” Blaine said, before Kurt could speak. “That’s the killer.”

“What?” Carmichael was shaking his head. “This girl killed eight people?”

“Eight?” Kurt squeaked.

Blaine frowned. “I only knew of seven deaths, counting the jock I found just before I heard Kurt struggling with the girl down here.”

“It’s nine deaths, actually,” said one of the patrolmen who just got off his radio. “They just found another one in the choir room. Some girl.”

Blaine frowned. “Who else?”

“The cheerleading coach, in her office.” That came from one of the other detectives on the scene.

“Are you sure this girl was the killer?” Carmichael asked again.

Blaine nodded. “The jock on the floor above had no weapons marks on him, which means he was killed in a direct hand to hand assault. She’s the only one who could have matched him. And I saw her attacking Kurt with my own eyes.”

For once, Carmichael couldn’t think of an argument to discredit the rookie. He hated the kid. That much was clear. But like hell was he going to let him get the glory over his precedence. He glanced back at one of the cops behind him.

“Set up a press conference immediately so I can tell them I got the killer,” he said.

Blaine narrowed his eyes. “Excuse me?” he questioned. “ _ You _ got the killer?!”

Carmichael smirked at Blaine. “Do you really think people are going to believe a puny little rookie like you solved a massive serial murder case?” He clucked his tongue and God Blaine hated when he did that.

“Leave him alone you big bully!” a voice shouted. The cops all glanced around but then, something was jerking back Carmichael’s balding head and the overweight detective slipped and fell backwards on the stairs. Kurt and Blaine both watch as a disembodied head materialized in front of the detective’s face. “You best treat Blaine with more respect or I’ll be watching, you bully!” The head blew a raspberry and vanished. It took all Blaine and Kurt’s resolve not to laugh as Carmichael scrambled to his feet and dashed away up the stairs, a stain rapidly forming in the seat of his pants as the smell of urine filled the air.

…

Blaine walked beside Kurt, a couple of inches of space between them, as they exited the building, into the parking lot where Kurt had parked, what seemed like years ago now. The detective had snagged a blanket from one of the paramedic units that had been called in, and wrapped it around the teen’s shoulders. Neither of them had said a word since Kurt had given his statement to one of the uniformed cops, and Blaine had been interviewed about discharging his weapon.

They stopped beside the Navigator, and Kurt pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, trying not to look up at the older man’s face, not sure he wanted to know what he would see there.

“Thank you,” Kurt said, somewhat awkwardly. “For everything. I could have gone to jail.”

Blaine reached out and tipped his chin up. “I wouldn’t let that happen, Kurt.” Kurt swallowed as the detective took a step closer. “From the moment I saw you at the precinct, there was something about you that just drew me. I felt a connection to you, Kurt, and after all of this, it’s only grown stronger.”

Kurt’s heart kicked in his chest, and he stepped closer, until they were almost touching. “I felt it, too,” he admitted, and closed the distance between them, lips gliding against lips.

The kiss was softer than the previous one had been, more tentative, but no less mind numbing. The world seemed to fade away until only the two of them remained.

“Dude! That’s my little brother!” Finn’s voice brought their little moment crashing down around them, and Blaine stumbled back. They were surrounded by the New Directions.

Kurt was frowning. “I’m older than you, Finn Hudson! How many times do I have to remind you of that?”

“Still, isn’t macking on a teenager illegal?” Puck demanded, glaring at the cop like he wanted to beat him up for daring to touch their precious Porcelain.

Blaine just stared him down. “Only if they are under eighteen.”

“Exactly!” Finn growled.

“Which I’m not!” Kurt shouted.

The rest of New Directions looked confused. “Not what?” Finn demanded.

“He’s not under eighteen,” Blaine said, taking a step back towards him.

“Since when?” Puck asked, still looking murderous.

“Since midnight,” Kurt replied, crossing his arms and glaring at his friends. “Today is my birthday. I’m eighteen now!”

“I’m sorry, what?” Mercedes asked, her eyes going wide. “Are you telling us you were born on Halloween?” Kurt just nodded, looking sheepish and Mercedes frowned, but her next words told him it wasn’t for the reason he’d thought. “Is that why you’ve been so out of it all night?”

Kurt was surprised by her words, but if he could use this as an excuse so that his friends would never know what really happened, he was going to take it.

“Yeah,” he said, sighing. “There’s a reason why I never mentioned exactly when my birthday was. It used to be awesome when I was younger. But when I got to middle school, my old one, kids started teasing me about it. A boy I had called my friend told everyone a black cat crossed the path when I was born and that was why I was a freak.”

His friends all glanced at each other, a few of the girls looking completely sick at the thought.

“Okay, despite all the bullying you’ve suffered Kurt, nothing is lower than people making a birthday into a joke,” Quinn said.

Sam spoke for everyone when he looked at Kurt and said, “And we will never let it be again, because that’s what true friends are.” The rest of them all nodded and it brought Kurt one of the first real genuine smiles he’d had all day.

They all smiled and piled into him in a big group hug. As they pulled apart, Tina glanced around, her smile faltering. “Hey, where’s Rachel?”

Kurt and Blaine exchanged a look, and simultaneously shrugged and said, “I have no idea.”


	11. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here it is! The epilogue! I can't believe posting of this little fic is over! Now, I have some thank yous I would like to give out.
> 
> First off, I have to thank my co-author, grlnxtdr29 for agreeing to take a chance on this little Halloween plot bunny I had. She was excellent in helping come up with plot points, little twists, and who would die, as well as work out the order of the deaths. Didn't she do a great job with Rachel's? :)
> 
> Secondly, I guess I should thank Halloween because without it, we never get to entertain plot bunnies like this one! Call me silly, but Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. This is the first year in a while I'm doing absolutely nothing for it, as I spent the last four years working in a haunted house.
> 
> And third, I want to thank you guys, the readers! Without you, we'd have no reason to write and posts stories and find whatever twists and turns we can and you all have been so great!
> 
> On that note, I hope we haven't terrified you too badly. Comments and kudos are always welcome guys!
> 
> Thanks bunches!

“Dead...she’s dead…”

“Kurt?”

“It’s my fault...dead.”

“Kurt!”

The pale boy shot up at the sudden shout of his name, nearly leaping into the air. He glanced around frantically to see Blaine sitting beside him, looking concerned. “Blaine?” he asked.

“It’s okay Kurt,” The other replied. “I think you were just having a nightmare.”

Kurt looked around the room, frowning. “When did we leave the parking lot?” he asked and Blaine gave him a confused look, reaching out a hand to gently rest atop the pale boy’s.

“What parking lot?” he asked.

It was Kurt’s turn to look confused. “The McKinley parking lot. The Halloween dance. The murders. Freddie possessing me.”

“Kurt, what are you talking about?” Blaine asked, his concern growing. He’d only entered the room a few minutes before, but it was in enough time to notice his friend had been in the throws of a nightmare.

It was then that Kurt got a really good look at where he was and for a moment, he didn’t recognize the room at all. “Where am I?” he asked.

Blaine frowned. It must have been some nightmare Kurt had been having. “You’re in the commons at Dalton Academy,” he told him, not being the type of person who would treat the boy like something was wrong.

His words resonated with Kurt and the boy felt reality slip back into him. He deflated on the couch, noticing he was still fully dressed in his uniform and almost immediately wishing that he had changed into something more comfortable before he’d met Blaine and the Warblers down there earlier in the evening.

Truth be told, Kurt would be lying if he said he’d been sleeping well. Dalton’s curriculum was a lot more challenging than McKinley’s and even though the end of semester was still over a month away, teachers were already starting to pile on the review for final exams.

He ran a hand over his face. “I never should have watched that slasher movie with you guys last night.”

Blaine chuckled. “Oh come on Kurt. We’re stuck at Dalton in the middle of the week. How else would we have celebrated Halloween?”

“Not by getting possessed and killing off people,” Kurt deadpanned.

“What?” Blaine asked in surprise.

“It was so real. I dreamt that it was my senior year at McKinley and I’d never even come to Dalton. On Halloween, I had to go to the basement to use the boy’s bathroom because the regular one was out of order as usual. And then I got possessed and started killing people during the dance that night!”

Blaine’s eyes got really wide at his words. Yeah, it definitely had been some nightmare. “Kurt?” he asked carefully. “Who were you saying was dead?”

Kurt blanched. “Rachel,” he said in a quiet voice. “Freddie made me kill her. He made me force acid down her throat and I watched it burn through everything.”

The boy sitting beside the couch shuddered because he had never heard of such gory detail in a dream before. But then something caught his attention. “Did you say Freddie?” he asked. Kurt nodded. “That’s weird. I used to have an imaginary friend when I was a kid. He said his name was Freddie Studebaker. My mom still gets freaked when I bring him up.”

Kurt stared at Blaine for a long moment. “That was him, Blaine. The ghost. His name was Freddie Studebaker. He’d been beaten to death by jocks in the boy’s bathroom in the basement in 1967.”

Blaine looked even more weirded out. “My mom’s oldest sister, my aunt Angela has an age gap with my mom a lot like mine and Cooper’s. She was a student at McKinley in 1967.”

The pale boy could not believe what was happening here. Had he really dreamt of something that was partially a reality? Come to think of it, he’d never actually been in the basement of McKinley. It was boarded off. He’d always wondered why.

“Wait a second, I just remembered something,” he said and looked at Blaine for a beat. “I like to look at old yearbooks. In the dream, that was how I knew about Freddie. The staff would never talk about the basement, or why it wasn’t used, and that’s the same in real life. But unlike in the dream, I’ve never actually seen either yearbook from 1967. Peculiarly, both the 66-67 and 67-68 yearbooks are missing from the library’s alumni shelves.”

Blaine furrowed his brow for a moment. “I wonder why that is,” he said.

Kurt shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Wait, was I in your dream?” Blaine asked, looking up at the boy.

He nodded. “Yes, but you were a twenty-seven year old detective with the Lima Police Department and an old fart asshole for a boss named Carmichael, who Freddie scared the piss out of at the end.”

Blaine’s face blanched. “Carmichael? That’s my dad’s middle name!”

Kurt was starting to get a weird feeling. So many coincidences. “Okay, any other strange facts you want to share to see if they were in my dream?”

Blaine studied his face for a moment, actually thinking about it. “Not that I’m aware of. Oh, unless one of your victims died by crossbow. My grandfather almost went to prison for assault when he accidentally shot a neighbor in the ass with one.”

Kurt stood up and took a step away from the curly haired boy. “Okay, now I’m freaked out.”

“What? I was joking. My grandfather wouldn’t know a crossbow if it hit him in the ass.”

“Blaine, one of the victims  _ did _ die by crossbow! Granted, she was a girl who’s supposed to be a freshman when I’m a senior, which means...she doesn’t even go to McKinley yet, if she’s a real person.”

“Huh,” Blaine said. “What was her name?”

“Kitty Wilde,” Kurt said.

Blaine shrugged. “Never met anyone named Kitty. Although I do know a family named Wilde. I think they have a daughter, but I don’t know her name. Never met her. I only saw a glimpse of her once a few years ago at some charity event. Shorter than me, but she’s probably grown some now. Blonde hair.”

Kurt was quiet for a moment, hugging himself. “Kitty Wilde is a blonde. And she was a real prissy bitch too. Freddie made me kill her because he said she would never replace Quinn as queen bee. Kitty idolized her.”

Now Blaine was getting a weird feeling. “Who else died? And how?”

The pale boy started pacing. Normally, he didn’t remember his dreams in detail, but this one did not seem to be a normal dream.

“First, I slit Principal Figgins’ throat.”

Blaine shrugged. That one seemed justified to him. Kurt had told him all about the penny pinching principal who refused to protect Kurt from the bullies at McKinley, or install security cameras. 

“Next, Sandy Ryerson was stabbed several times with a dagger. And just minutes later, I tricked stoner Brett into thinking he could fly and he jumped off the roof.” They were both people who unnerved Kurt a bit, but the only real problem he’d had with Brett was that he smelled homeless.

“Kitty was next. I shot an arrow through her head and then used two more to pin her hands to a bulletin board.” Here though, Kurt paused, looking nervous and shifting from foot to foot. 

Blaine nodded. “What happened then?”

Kurt swallowed. “Karofsky was next. He was locked in a classroom to await questioning when you caught him and his goons beating on me.” He drew a breath before continuing. “I came in with an axe. I must have gotten it from an emergency kit on the wall with the fire extinguisher. First, I broke his jaw with the handle so he couldn’t scream. Then, I castrated him, and finally, I chopped his head off.”

Blaine squirmed a bit at the details, but secretly thought once again the actions would have been justified. Yeah, the jock was conflicted about his sexuality, but that was no excuse for trying to sexually assault Kurt. “And after Karofsky?”

Kurt’s voice was soft when he replied. “That’s when I killed Rachel in the choir room with the acid. I wanted to destroy her vocal cords.”

“Why?”

“For never giving the rest of us a chance to shine,” Kurt replied.

Blaine nodded, and indicated for him to go on.

“The next murder, is probably the most surprising of all of them.” He paused, looking contemplative for a moment. “I tricked Sue into eating a pom-pom laced with cyanide.”

Blaine furrowed his forehead, sensing a pattern here. “What happened after that?”

“Well, by this time, everyone was ordered to stay in the gym. Finn and I had gone against the order to go look for Rachel, even though I knew she was already dead.” He gave his head a shake. “The dream didn’t tell me how I got away from Finn without him being suspicious of my disappearance, but I next found myself in the library. JBI was in there, recording a stupid video for his vlog of all things. I ended up trying to crush him with a bookcase, but he moved enough out of the way that it only pinned his legs. So then I took the heaviest book I could find and embedded the corner in his head.”

Kurt had stopped pacing, but he had started shaking. Reliving the whole thing, even though it hadn’t been real just felt so...spooky so to speak.

“Finally, I gave Finn, Mercedes, Puck, and Sam the slip in searching for Rachel when I thought I heard her call to me for help. They didn’t hear it. Subconsciously, I knew it wasn’t really her because she was already dead. But for some reason, I followed the call anyway.” He came back to the couch and sat down again, afraid that his knees might buckle if he kept standing.

“That’s when I came across Azimio. The cops had released him and the other jocks on account of having bigger worries. Freddie made me attempt to physically fight him, and at the same time, I found myself struggling with Freddie’s possession. Azimio managed to knock my helmet off and a shriek of my name when it came off alerted us that Lauren Zizes was bearing witness to the fight. Azimio had gotten distracted long enough for me to push him over and he fell down the stairs to the floor. I don’t even know how I had the strength to do it. Probably should have realized then that I was dreaming.”

So far, with the exception of Kitty, all the people Kurt had ‘killed’ in the dream had been people who had either hurt, offended, or oppressed Kurt at McKinley, or failed to protect him. Blaine couldn’t explain away the coincidences, but the rest of the dream could just be Kurt’s way of dealing with unresolved anger and anxiety issues.

Kurt knew he wasn’t done exactly, but he didn't actually kill the last person who died. Blaine had killed her. He was quiet for a moment, deciding that maybe Blaine didn’t necessarily need the blow by blow at the end.

“That was when you showed up and at that point, you’d figured out I was the killer. We wound up in the basement with Freddie switching his interest from me to you and then he took your gun and he...and he…” Kurt trailed off, not sure if he could actually say this part. He swallowed and shut his eyes. “He pointed the gun at me, said I had just been getting in his way. You’d knocked Lauren unconscious with a taser and we dragged her down with us. She’d been tied up and came to while Freddie was trying to get you to kill me. But you started fighting him in your own body for possession of the gun. It went off and shot Lauren in the back.”

Blaine had frowned when Kurt had mentioned he had tried to kill him in the dream. He wasn’t a psychologist, but he’d taken Dalton’s elective Psych class the previous semester, and realized that it was probably Kurt’s subconscious fear of being betrayed that had conjured up that part of the dream. He hoped the fact that he hadn’t killed Kurt in the dream proved to the older boy that he could trust Blaine with his worries and fears.

The only part he didn’t understand was the part about killing Zizes. Neither he nor Kurt knew the girl well. All Blaine really knew about her was that she was the warm body the New Directions had found to make the minimum twelve members for the Sectionals competition coming up this weekend.

“After that,” Kurt continued, “we somehow managed to bring Freddie back from his place of murderous revenge and he left us alone, fleeing probably back into the bathroom when the other cops came down the stairs to see what the noise was. You told Carmichael that Lauren had been the killer and he decided he was going to take the credit because he said no one would believe you. That’s when Freddie scared the piss out of him.”

Kurt turned his head away to hide the flush at the memory of what had happened at the end of the nightmare, not really wanting Blaine to know that part. He didn’t need the boy to know about his crush on him. It was probably silly anyway. Blaine might be gay, but he was the kind of guy who could get any guy he wanted and he was out of Kurt’s league.

Blaine smiled reassuringly at him. “As far as nightmares go, that was pretty intense. Kind of freaky with the coincidences, but I’m sure we can explain those, eventually. Probably just stuff you heard and not registered at the time. As for the rest of it, well, you know your dreams are where your brain deals with things you don’t really want to think about when you are awake. You’ve been under a lot of stress the past month or so. I’m surprised you haven’t had more nightmares.”

Kurt chanced a glance back at the other boy. “I think it was triggered by that slasher movie last night.” It was at that point, he yawned and Blaine laughed lightly, standing from his spot on the floor.

“Come on mister,” he said, holding out a hand. “It’s the middle of the night. Let’s get you to bed. For real this time.”

Kurt giggled a little and took the boy’s hand. He was so grateful that Blaine was his roommate and realized that that might have been why he’d come looking for him.

Blaine kept the smile on his face as he led Kurt back to their dorm, never once letting go of his hand. It reminded the pale boy of the day they’d met, but this felt much more intimate and he flushed again.

“Here we are Sleeping Handsome,” Blaine said when they arrived at their dorm room. Kurt playfully swatted his arm as they entered.

“Blaine, you shouldn’t say things like that!”

“I shouldn’t tell you that you’re handsome?” the curly haired boy replied casually, a small smile on his face. Kurt felt his ears go warm.

“Well, no...I mean yes…I mean…” Blaine chuckled at Kurt’s adorable stammering. He leaned forward and whispered into the boy’s ear.

“Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you forever.” Kurt felt his breath catch and suddenly, Blaine’s lips were on his. This time, it was real. This time, it wasn’t a dream. And this time...well, he felt just as strongly about it as the dream kiss.

When the two boys finally broke for air, they were breathing heavily. Blaine leaned his head against Kurt’s, his lips flush and plump from the kiss.

“By the way,” he said. “Is Halloween really your birthday?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> grlnxtdr29 and I would just like to say, no characters were actually harmed in the making of this story.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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